‘Already? Isn’t that tight?’
‘You’ll have plenty of time. He usually spends several hours there getting drunk.’
Bethan sat at her kitchen table working on her laptop by the light of a lamp, sipping a cup of tea and eating a sandwich.
Her mobile chirped and she picked it up. ‘Hello, boss.’
‘S C & O 19 won’t give you access,’ Dillon said.
She slumped with disappointment.
‘They expect to be able to release information on the case in the next week or so.’
‘That’s it?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Did you find out if there is a suspect at least?’
Dillon went silent.
Bethan grew hopeful. ‘There is, isn’t there?’
‘Yes.’
‘A week could be too late.’
‘That’s irrelevant.’
‘His life is irrelevant?’
‘S C & O 19 is mounting an important operation based on elements of the case. That operation takes priority.’
‘To a human life? Did you tell them he was in danger?’
‘It’s only a theory and not a very tight one either.’
‘This is a Catch 22. You realise that, don’t you?’
‘It’s a significant operation as I understand it.’
‘We’re missing an opportunity to solve several murders and by doing so prevent others. We’re talking about organised serial killings.’
‘I was going to trust you with a name but I’m not sure I will now.’
‘You have the rapist’s name?’
Dillon goes silent again.
‘I promise you I can be trusted with it.’
‘If I give it to you it has to be for research only. They’ll release the name in a week but you’ll have the jump.’
She perked up. ‘Absolutely. Of course. I understand completely.’
‘I want your word,’ Dillon insisted. ‘Your solemn promise not to share it with anyone or act on anything you find without consulting me.’
‘I promise. I won’t do anything with it other than background research.’
He hesitated.
‘I won’t do anything that will raise a flag,’ she insisted. ‘I promise.’
‘Your friend Jedson is the field manager on this.’
‘Jedson? He’s an imbecile.’
‘Apparently not as stupid as he appears. His undercover work has provided a lot of significant operational data. They’re actually talking about a promotion if he pulls this one off.’
‘Oh dear. He’ll be more insufferable than he is already, if that’s possible.’
‘You ready for the name?’
‘Yes.’
‘Milo Krilov.’
Bethan tapped the name onto her computer screen. ‘Krilov with a K?
‘Kilo, Romeo, India, Lima, Oscar, Victor. Russian. Former Russian Special Forces.’
‘Special Forces?’
‘Extremely dangerous.’
‘Any idea why he wasn’t charged?’
‘He’s essential to the operation.’
‘Is he aware of that? I mean, is he volunteering info?’
‘No. Even more reason why we must respect the confidentiality. He doesn’t know we’re onto him.’
She typed his name into her police data portal. ‘Thank you, sir.’
As Dillon disconnected his call a picture of Milo Krilov appeared on her computer screen. A heavy set, balding man who looked every bit an Eastern European thug.
The two MI6 4x4s drove towards an aircraft parked alone and away from the terminal buildings, a British Airways Boeing 777. There was another 4x4 parked in front of the aircraft. Two men wearing overalls were beneath the front wheel arch shining lights up into it. As the 4x4s arrived, Gunnymede watched them place a ladder that reached up inside the wheel bay and one of them climbed inside.
‘The crew will be here in about thirty minutes,’ Aristotle said. ‘Soon as the guys attach the harnesses you’ll get into position. The pilot may shine a light on you while he carries out pre-flight inspections. He’ll know you’re there of course.’
‘What’s the drill if he misses the drop?’
‘Your only option is to release over Kazakhstan. Unless you want to continue all the way to China. Landing in Beijing would not be a good idea.’
No kidding.
Gunnymede watched the engineers faff around in the wheel housing, attaching straps and what looked like an oxygen bottle.
‘You’re not English,’ Gunnymede said.
‘Do I sound English?’
‘No. But then not all English sound English.’
‘I’m Greek.’
‘I had my suspicions,’ Gunnymede said, rolling his eyes.
‘Aristotle’s not my real name.’
‘Seriously? And there was I thinking you were related. So what’s a Greek doing working for 6?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘I would hope so.’
‘My relationship is with Harlow. Call it a special relationship. His father and my father worked together in the Second World War. My father was with the resistance. Harlow’s father was with the SOE. You know how nepotistic MI6 is. Wasn’t your father in the firm?’
Gunnymede glanced at him.
Aristotle moved on. ‘Harlow’s father parachuted into Greece one day and stayed for more than a year fighting the Germans and Italians. They became good friends. After the war Harlow’s father often came to visit. I knew Harlow as a child. I used to beat him with a stick. He wasn’t a very nice boy. Spoilt. Typical upper class wanker.’
‘And now you like him?’
‘He’s tolerable.’
‘How’d you end up working for him?’
‘I was a Greek civil servant for thirty-six years.’
‘Secret services?’
Aristotle shrugged without denying it. ‘Part of the time. I was stationed in many embassies around the world. When I retired, Harlow asked if I’d like to work with the British. I saw it as a kind of family tradition.’
‘You were working for 6 while a Greek civil servant?’
‘I never said that.’
‘You didn’t need to. So, what exactly is your position in the firm?’ Gunnymede asked.
‘I’m nothing but an oily rag to a very large engine.’
Gunnymede looked at him, unsure if he could believe any of it. The floodlights went off, plunging the area in darkness.
‘They’re ready for you,’ Aristotle said.
There was a knock on the window. One of the MI engineers gave them a thumbs up and they climbed out.
Gunnymede awkwardly made his way to the foot of the ladder in his cocoon and an engineer attached clips to hoops on the back of it. ‘Pure silicon carbide,’ the engineer said as he tightened a drawstring. ‘Best RAM there is. You familiar with RAM?’
‘Radiation absorbent material,’ Gunnymede said.
‘It won’t conceal you completely but it shouldn’t raise any alarms. Just another dead bird.’
‘Dead bird?’ Aristotle asked.
‘His radar reflection won’t be much greater than that of a goose,’ the engineer explained. ‘You’d be surprised at the number of birds that die while flying. A normal flying bird has a pattern anomaly that is ignored by radar tracking algorithms. Otherwise early warning systems would be triggering every minute. But when they die and drop it’s out of rhythm and they can attract attention. Russian radar will track him falling but the operator will assume it was a bird strike because of the stealth image.’
‘What kind of bird?’ Gunnymede asked.
‘What?’ the engineer asked.
‘What kind of bird? I’m dropping at 36,000 feet.’
‘Geese?’ Aristotle suggested.
‘Geese fly at 36,000 feet?’ Gunnymede asked, unconvinced.
‘Actually no,’ the engineer said. ‘Geese are around 30,000. I looked it up. The highest ever recorded bird was at
37,000 feet.’
‘What was it?’ Gunnymede asked.
‘A Rueppell’s vulture,’ the engineer replied with some satisfaction.
‘A vulture?’
‘That’s right.’
‘What time of year?’
The engineer was suddenly not quite as confident. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. He held the parachute up for Gunnymede to pull on and buckled it up around his chest and thighs.
‘Do you think the Russians know about Rueppell’s vultures?’
The engineer gave him a pathetic smile.
The final touches were oxygen bottle and mask, a pair of goggles, his helmet and an altimeter which Gunnymede strapped to his wrist, all coated in tiny silicon carbide cones.
‘Up you get,’ the engineer said as he zipped up the final flap of the stealth suit. ‘Good luck.’
‘Enjoy your trip,’ Aristotle said.
‘I’ll bring you back some fake caviar.’
Gunnymede climbed the ladder. The engineer inside the wheel housing attached the harness to the ceiling and helped Gunnymede into position. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve done this before?’ he asked.
‘Nope.’
‘It’s basic enough. The harness’ll hold you into the ceiling. Once the doors close it’ll be like lying in a hammock. Your O2 is here, enough for twenty-four hours. Your suit heater plugs in there.’ He plugged it in. ‘Refreshments here. If you need to take a piss, just do it through this flap onto the door. If you want to take a dump you’re on your own - design budget didn’t stretch that far. A couple of minutes before the drop, the doors’ll open. Pull this toggle here and the harness’ll disconnect you. Position yourself on the wheel, which will be here. The pilot’ll give the wheel a jerk a minute before you reach the drop zone. Your backpack is clipped to the parachute harness as per normal HALO jumps. When you’re over the drop point the pilot will give the wheel another jerk. That’s your signal to release. Don’t hang about. Every second is about two hundred and fifty metres off your landing point. Six seconds a mile. He will’ve allowed for wind speed and direction so that wheel jerk will be three seconds from smack above your landing point. Is that all good for you?’
‘So, from the second wheel jerk I’ve got three seconds to fall out,’ Gunnymede said.
‘Thousand and one, thousand and two, thousand and three,’ the engineer said as he tightened the straps and made a final check of everything using a flashlight. ‘You got your ear defenders?’
Gunnymede held them up.
‘That’s your harness release toggle.’ He pointed to a strap above Gunnymede’s face. ‘Right then. You’re good to go. Good luck. Safe journey.’ The engineer struggled to give him a smile as if that was all he could offer. He was clearly concerned yet also impressed with the stranger and could only wonder who he was and what his mission was. He removed the ladder and walked away with it.
Gunnymede made himself comfortable. His only view was the ceiling. He heard vehicle doors close, engines gun to life and drive away. A few minutes later the floodlights came back on. It was business as usual for the aircraft.
Gunnymede closed his eyes. It was comfortable if nothing else. Butterflies flew around inside his belly but not as badly as before. He was handling it. Kind of. Half an hour later the beam of the pilot’s flashlight fluttered above him. The man had no idea what to expect when he shone his torch up into the darkness. He knew someone would be up there but nothing else. He was uncomfortable knowing someone would be hanging beneath him for several hours and that he’d drop him away at thirty-six thousand feet while they were doing six hundred miles per hour. And like the MI6 engineer, he could only wonder who the person was and what they were going to do when they landed in Russia.
Thirty-five minutes later, the plane taxied towards the runway. Gunnymede looked down at the tarmac. The engines roared to full power and he jolted in the harness as the aircraft accelerated. Turbulence filled the cavity with increasing ferocity. Something was flapping madly at Gunnymede’s feet. The aircraft rumbled along. From his perspective the runway surface was surprisingly uneven. The wheel structure bounced violently at times, finding dips and bumps as the aircraft picked up speed. When the wheel left contact with the tarmac it continued to spin. The hydraulics immediately kicked in, there was a loud clunk as the suspension elbow disengaged and the wheel supports folded inwards and rose up towards him.
The wheel stopped a few inches short of Gunnymede’s back and the double doors began to close. As the gap got smaller the turbulence, which had reached hurricane proportions, reduced proportionally. The sprinklings of lights on the ground were gradually shut out until, with a final clunk, it went completely dark and the wind abruptly ceased.
It wasn’t as loud as Gunnymede thought it might be, to the extent that he didn’t use his earplugs, the hooded part of the stealth suit providing enough protection. He couldn’t see a thing at first, but within minutes, his eyes adjusted to what little light there was coming from various LEDs dotted about, not that there was much to look at.
He felt a vibration in a trouser pocket. His phone. With some contorting he managed to retrieve it and checked who it was. Bethan.
‘Hello,’ he said, closing the top of the stealth suit to reduce the noise.
‘Have I caught you at a bad time? I can barely hear you.’ She was at her desk, one of the few at work.
‘I’m at an airport?’
‘Will you be coming back to London any time soon?’
‘I’ll give you a call.’
‘I look forward to it.’
The signal suddenly dropped. Gunnymede jolted around in his cocoon as the aircraft hit a pocket of turbulence. The hammock setup was actually soothing. He closed his eyes and concentrated on relaxing, a practice he’d perfected in prison. Within minutes he fell into a light sleep.
Mahmoud sat in one of the little cafes in the lower level of the Galata road bridge that connected old and new Constantinople. He’d been there for almost an hour. When his time was up, which would be soon, he’d head back into the old town near the railway where he shared an ISIS safe house with several other young men. They all seemed to be waiting to head into Syria, unlike him who was waiting to head further west, but to where he had no idea. His orders were to go to the cafe at 9pm where he was to wait to be contacted. If no one showed by 10pm he was to go back to the house and repeat the procedure every evening until his contact arrived.
Each time someone entered the cafe he looked at them in the hope they were the one. This was the third night of the routine. He was bored in Turkey and wanted to get on with his life. He had been assured that as soon as this deception was over he’d be reassigned, which probably meant going back to Syria. One of his concerns was that his passport was not really his. He didn’t think he looked much like Saleem although he was enough, it seemed, to convince the Turkish border guards.
An Arab man entered the cafe and sat at a table across from him. He ordered a coffee and concentrated on his phone. Mahmoud watched him for a while before deciding the man wasn’t interested in him. Another five minutes and he’d leave.
What Mahmoud wasn’t aware of was that the new arrival was photographing him. The recognition images were messaged to GCHQ in England and within a few minutes it was confirmed that Mahmoud was not Saleem.
When Mahmoud left the cafe he was too inexperienced to notice the Arab man follow him or the two other men that tagged along from wherever they'd been waiting. Mahmoud had done the journey several times already and would do it again the following evening. All he wanted to do was get back to the house.
As Mahmoud made his way through dark, narrow streets his followers came together, caught up with him, pounced on him from behind and dragged him into an alleyway. They held him down, covering his mouth to keep him quiet while one of them injected a fluid into his neck. They kept their firm grip of him for almost a minute while he went limp and his eyes changed from frantic to relaxed and then shut. A car pulled up. Mahmoud was to
ssed into the back. The others jumped in and the vehicle drove away.
Gunnymede was abruptly woken up by a combination of the scream of hydraulic motors, a burst of bright sunlight and a fierce wind. The air circled inside the small space like an entrapped tornado and rapidly reduced in violence to severe wind as the bay doors opened beneath him. The sun was low in the sky and directly ahead of the plane.
He’d fallen into a deep sleep, no doubt assisted by the pure oxygen, and fought to switch himself on. He quickly unplugged the oxygen umbilical from the main supply and plugged it into the small bottle attached to his harness. The hammock release cord dangled above his face. He took a moment to ensure his gear was secure, his kit between his legs. All seemed good. Time to drop into the gap between the wheels. He gave the toggle a yank.
Nothing happened.
He gave it another sharp tug but the hammock remained locked into place. He quickly checked the cable, where it went through the rings along the aircraft body but he couldn’t see an obvious jam. He pulled hard on it with both hands, acutely aware the second hand was ticking, tugging at it violently but still it remained jammed.
The wheel suddenly jerked upwards a few inches hitting him in the back before returning to its position. Signal number one. A minute to go. Another tug and still nothing. This was not good. He wrapped the toggle around his hand, gripped it with the other and pulled as hard as he could. He paused a moment, positioned himself better and pulled on it again until he needed to relax. What the hell!
The wheel jerked again. Holy shit! He had three seconds to drop.
He mustered all his strength, raised his feet to the ceiling, pulled hard on the toggle and held the pressure. This was his last effort. The seconds were flying by, as was the plane over his target. He pushed as hard as he could with his feet, yelling out loud with the effort, his thighs taking the strain.
Something snapped! He flew back, the chute on his back hitting the wheel, flipped onto his side, dropped into the gap between the wheel and the left door and out of the plane in a single, slick movement. His head hit the slipstream first and he tore along the bottom of the aircraft as if it was sucking him up to it. The plane’s skin was millimetres from his face but before he could make contact with it, it disappeared in a snap and he spun like a rag doll in the aircraft’s slipstream. He fought against the g-force, pushed out his arms and legs, spreading like a starfish. Within seconds the spin was broken and he went stable on his back, nothing but blue sky in his vision. The plane was already a mile away.
The Becket Approval Page 15
