First Casualty (The Gabriel Wolfe Thrillers Book 4)

by Andy Maslen

  “Name’s Cordelia,” she said. “Lipscomb.”

  She held out her hand, which he shook as he sat down.

  “Rhodes,” he said. “Rhodes Cheaney.”

  “My, my, how very exotic we both sound. Were our parents afraid of conformity, do you suppose?”

  Gabriel thought back to his English father, a career diplomat, and his half-Chinese mother, a private tutor. They had lived and breathed conformity, except for the single rash act of their marriage itself.

  “I suppose they must have been. Thanks for inviting me over. It’s a bit lonely out here.” He raised his glass and watched her eyes as she clinked hers against it, raising a loud ping from the rim.

  “In Harare? Or Africa? You sound like you’re a long way from home.”

  “I am.”

  “British?”

  “Mm hmm,” he said. He sipped his drink and relaxed as the cold gin hit his stomach.

  “I, myself, am an American. Though perhaps you figured that out for yourself?”

  Gabriel smiled. He was beginning to like this glamorous woman with her antebellum manners.

  “Well, your accent is something of a giveaway.”

  “So is yours, dear boy. Tell me, what brings you to this, if I may say so, Godforsaken country?”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly as she asked her question. A casual observer wouldn’t have noticed, but Gabriel was not a casual observer. He had been trained to notice things.

  He noticed this.

  “I’m a doctor. I come out from time to time to do pro bono work – eye operations at the children’s hospital. How about you?”

  “A physician,” she breathed. “Giving sight back to those poor little black children. And for nothing. You truly are a saint. For myself, I’m afraid I am somewhat below you in the pecking order of virtue.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I am an attorney. What you British would call a barrister.”

  “Defence or prosecution?”

  “Oh, prosecution. I like to put the bad guys away.” Then she winked.

  The bar refilled as the patrons finished their texts and uploaded their videos, and the noise level increased. Sasha leaned closer to Gabriel.

  “If I may ask, is there a Mrs Cheaney? I don’t see a wedding band, but I know men are less concerned about such things.”

  He shook his head. “No. Footloose and fancy free.”

  “Oh, I am sure you won’t remain single for too much longer, looking the way you do and with such . . . obvious qualities. But tell me, do you travel out here alone every time? Surely you have someone to chaperone you?”

  “No, just me.”

  Gabriel knew she was probing for clues about his true identity. Maybe he could return the favour.

  “And you, Cordelia. Are you over here for a case? I didn’t realise American lawyers could practise overseas.”

  “No, I left my law books in Georgia. I’ve been visiting with family. My sister and brother live here. They’re missionaries. Can you believe it? In this day and age, it sounds so old fashioned. But I found out tonight they’re moving on to new pastures.”

  “And apart from your family, do you have any other friends here? Other lawyers?”

  “Sadly, no. Although from what I hear, it can be a tough place to practise.”

  Gabriel could almost hear the rapiers clanging as they fenced this way and that, looking for an opening without appearing to. He decided, whoever she was, she was far too skillful to give anything away. He drained his glass.

  “Well, I must go, I’m afraid. I have a delicate operation tomorrow that I need to prepare for. It’s been a pleasure.”

  He stood, hand extended, and she matched his movements. They shook hands and then he turned to go.

  “I hope we meet again, Rhodes,” she said. “I would love to find out what makes a man like you tick.”

  He walked through the drinkers without looking over his shoulder. He could feel her gaze drilling him right between the shoulder blades.

  39

  Not Alone, After All

  THE next morning, at 0815, Gabriel sat in his hotel room, eating smoked ham rolls and drinking the passable coffee he’d ordered for breakfast from room service.

  A “Do Not Disturb” sign hung on the outer door knob. He had no intention of leaving the room until Tatyana texted him to say his ride had arrived. And if she didn’t text? Then he would exfiltrate under his own steam. He still had the card Darryl Burroughs had given him on their first night in Zimbabwe. He still had a pocket full of US dollars. And he still had his wits. They had got him out of worse scrapes than this.

  After showering and dressing, he sat at the desk, picked up the satellite phone and called Don. He’d briefly considered buying a burner phone in one of the many shops that seemed to sell them, but just as quickly dismissed the idea. The satphone was encrypted, at least, and he had no idea whether Sutherland would be able to discover who was calling Don from a foreign burner.

  Aha! So we’re sure she’s behind it then, are we?

  The phone at the other end began to ring with a furry sound, then the recorded message clicked in and Gabriel’s heart jumped a little as Don’s familiar, soft voice began to speak:

  “This is Don Webster. Leave a message, Old Sport.”

  At the final two words, it did more than jump a little. It leapt right into his throat. “Old Sport.” Don’s name for him. It was a message. Had to be. That Don wanted him to make contact. But what to say? He hung up. He needed to think. He cast his mind back to their previous conversation. He wanted to let Don know that the attempts to silence him, permanently, had failed, and that he was still alive and in the game. And a code word that would let Don know his identity, but nobody else. Five minutes later, he dialled again. After Don’s outbound message finished, Gabriel left his own, in an Australian accent.

  “Mr Webster? I’m calling from Babbage’s? Give us a call, mate, and we can fix up a time to deliver your lawnmower. Bye for now.”

  Would it fool any spooks who were monitoring Don’s calls, trying to get a fix on Gabriel’s location? Gabriel had no way of knowing. But he had to try to reach his old CO somehow. As he ended the call, his personal phone vibrated – two short buzzes – on the nightstand. He jumped up and crossed the floor to the bed in two long strides and snatched up the phone. It was a text alert. The faint characters hidden by the unlock screen said, “Britta.” He swiped his unlock pattern, a simplified Chinese character that meant truth, and tapped the icon.

  Back safely. Wasn’t missed. At flat. Take care. I love you. B x

  “I love you, too, Britta,” he whispered. Then stopped, and frowned. “I do?” he asked, in a louder voice this time. He sat down on the bed and cradled the phone in his hands, looking at the text. When had that happened? He’d thought they just enjoyed each other’s company, whether between the sheets, in a restaurant or exchanging automatic fire with African militia, or hired muscle driving Humvees.

  His thumbs hovered over the screen until it faded to black and he had to reswipe his unlock pattern. The process repeated itself a dozen times before he answered.

  Good. I will. You take care. I love you too. G x

  He pressed SEND.

  “Fuck me, Falskog, that’s a complication I really could have done without.”

  But he was smiling as he said it. His insides felt jittery, but not the anxious worms of doubt squirming in his stomach before closing with the enemy. More like the feeling he used to get before taking to the pitch for a rugby sevens game back in Hong Kong, where, as a teenager, he’d excelled at the fast-moving sport.

  Gabriel found he was running through all kinds of possibilities in his head for a life back in England with the red-haired Swede he was apparently in love with. Married with children, pushing buggies through a park in Chiswick near her flat? No. Too conventional. Living in a city-centre apartment in Stockholm, teaching the kids to sail? Better. Running a discreet private security firm offering protec
tion to A-listers, living like gypsies in expensive boutique hotels in Manhattan, London, Paris and Beijing. Better still. He shook his head, like a dog trying to rid itself of fleas.

  “How about disavowed, disappeared or dead? Every trace of your former existence wiped from the record like pen off a whiteboard?” he muttered.

  The image didn’t appeal. He went to the window, opened a slit in the curtain on the left side and peered out. The sky was a uniform whitish-grey. People crowded the pavement, cars and trucks jammed the road, and small motorcycles wove amongst them. Through the rudimentary double-glazing he could hear the constant bleating and blaring of the vehicles’ horns.

  A plan existed in his mind, but it was vague. Pressed to explain, Gabriel would have said, “Get to London, confront Prime Minister, expose her to British media, keep head down till smoke clears.” Was it realistic? Almost certainly not.

  Early on in his Army career, Gabriel had realised that captain, the rank he’d attained in the SAS, was the highest he would ever rise. He was a tactician, not a strategist, gifted with the ability to achieve short-term goals efficiently and effectively, but not able, or, if truth were told, interested, in developing long-term solutions to big problems.

  How to clear that block of flats of enemy combatants? Leave it to me, Sir. How to get from this wadi to that town in stripped-down dune buggies? I’m on it, Sir. How to achieve peace between warring religious groups intent on exterminating each other in the name of God? Got to go and clean my weapon, Sir.

  But what other options did he have? It seemed clear to Gabriel now that, barring a development he was incapable of imagining, Barbara Sutherland had instructed him to kill an innocent man. And she was behind two separate attempts to take him, and Britta, out. If he went back to England and just resumed his normal existence, there’d be black-clad men in balaclavas and leather gloves hauling him from his bed at three in the morning. Or a tragic car accident. No. He had to pursue the new mission. Take down Barbara Sutherland before she did the same to him.

  He spent the next couple of hours doing a condensed version of his regular fitness routine: press-ups, squats, bicep curls using his bag, and yoga poses, which he held for five minutes each. The poses weren’t relaxing. A couple of them were so uncomfortable they bordered on excruciating. But they taught self-discipline and also stretched out the fascia around his muscles, which had often taken enough punishment that he wanted to leave them alone. He’d been taught this style of yoga by a woman he’d met at a cocktail party.

  Clara Lane didn’t look like a yoga teacher. Her appearance was more like that of the account managers at the advertising agency he’d joined after leaving The Regiment: high-heeled, sparkly shoes; lots of makeup; and a thousand-watt smile that made him feel lightheaded when she directed it at him.

  As he discovered at his first class with her, she didn’t sound like a yoga teacher either. “Come on, you babies!” she’d called out in an accent that was pure South London, “You’re not on Daddy’s fucking yacht now! High plank!” The memory made Gabriel smile. She reminded him of a Regimental Sergeant Major he’d known in the Paras.

  As he leant forward, breathing deeply and swearing continuously under his breath after squatting with his toes bent back for what felt like an eternity, his phone rang.

  “This is Gabriel,” he said.

  “And this is Tatyana. You are in pain, dear Gabriel. Are you all right?”

  “Hi Tatyana. No, I’m fine. Just finished a workout, that’s all.”

  “I am not sure such workout can be good for you. Listen, we are here. In Harare. At airport. You remember my instructions?”

  Gabriel steadied his breathing before answering.

  “Yes. I’ll come to the corporate jet zone. Your plane is a purple and gold Boeing. A Business Jet Three. Garin Group logo of two interlocking gold ‘G’s.”

  “Good boy! You remembered everything. We will wait until you arrive. And one last thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I hope you like vodka!”

  *

  Forty minutes later, he was standing on an access road looking through the chain-link fence at the area of Harare International Airport reserved for corporate jets. And there was Tatyana’s plane. It stood out in its imperial livery among the Learjets and other small aircraft – a purple and gold Rolls Royce in a crowd of white hatchbacks.

  He took a quick look around. The access road, cracked and dusty, with scrubby weeds growing up through the centre, was deserted. He looked up at the top edge of the fence. No cameras and, thankfully, no razor wire. Finally he scanned the ground between his position and the Garin Group Boeing. No airport personnel, no passengers either. Just a clear expanse of yellowish tarmac between him and his ride home.

  Taking a few steps back, he dropped his bag from his shoulder to the ground and then hefted it by its webbing strap. He executed a couple of turns, whirling the bag out at the end of his right arm, then released it like a discus thrower and hurled it up and over the fence. It landed with a thump and a puff of dust on the far side, about two or three yards from the bottom of the fence. Climbing chain-link hardly counted as surmounting an obstacle in Gabriel’s book, and he was up and over in a few seconds. He stooped to collect his bag then walked at a quick march towards the plane. There were a couple of soldiers on the other side of the runway, but they had their backs to Gabriel, looking towards the terminal building. Curls of smoke drifted upwards from their cigarettes.

  When he reached the plane’s gleaming side, he realised he had no idea what the protocol was for gaining admittance to a corporate jet. The doors were all closed and there didn’t appear to be a bell push anywhere in sight. Just as he was beginning to wonder whether Tatyana was even inside, a crop-headed man in a tight-fitting black suit, white shirt and dark blue tie materialised at his right shoulder.

  “You are Gabriel?” he asked, though he made it sound like a statement of fact.

  “Yes. Tatyana is expecting me.”

  The man held out his palm. “ID?”

  Gabriel fished his passport out and held it up with the photo page outwards.

  The man stood, his slabby face a mask of inscrutability as he studied the passport, then flicked his black eyes to Gabriel’s own features.

  “Fine. You wait.”

  He pulled out a walkie-talkie and spoke a few words of Russian into the mic.

  “Vash posetitel’ zdes’”

  Yes, I am here, Gabriel thought. And I’m quite keen to be aboard, if you don’t mind.

  The man nodded then turned to Gabriel. “They lower steps. Stand back, please.”

  With a muted groan of hydraulics, the passenger steps descended from the side of the plane and moments later, Gabriel was being kissed voluptuously, several times on both cheeks, by Tatyana Garin.

  “Here you are, my dear Gabriel Wolfe,” she cried, finally releasing him from her embrace and the cloud of expensive-smelling perfume he remembered from their previous meeting. “Now it is I who rescues you from dragons, yes?”

  Gabriel smiled at this effusive Russian billionaire and her extravagant way with the English language.

  “Yes, and I am truly grateful.”

  “Come, come,” she said. “You must be thirsty.”

  40

  A Girl’s Best Friend

  TATYANA poured out two huge glasses of vodka from a cut-glass decanter. The spirit making the ice cubes chink smelled of raspberries. She held her tumbler out to Gabriel.

  “Chin chin!”

  “Cheers!”

  He sipped the pale-pink spirit – it was smoother than he had been expecting and the heat it delivered to the pit of his stomach warmed rather than burnt.

  “We should strap ourselves in,” she said. “I ordered pilot to take off as soon as you are on board.”

  “We don’t have to wait for clearance?”

  “When you are as rich as I am, clearance comes as part of package.”

  He buckled his seatbelt.
The cabin was luxurious in a way that suggested an oceangoing yacht rather than a first-class cabin on an airliner. It was panelled in what looked like walnut, with paler inlays marking off the panels from each other. Each square panel had an inlaid Garin Group logo at its centre in a gold-coloured wood. The seats were vast, more like armchairs, with extendible foot rests and wide, padded arms. They were upholstered in white leather decorated with purple piping along the seams. Gabriel sat opposite Tatyana, facing forward. Between them, a low table, in a matching inlaid style to the walls, was bolted to the floor. Purple and gold silk curtains were tied back beside each of the windows and the colours were picked up in the thick pile carpet that covered the floor and the first foot of the walls.

  As the engines roared and the Boeing gathered speed along the runway, Gabriel looked out of the small Plexiglas window. He was leaving Africa without the one thing he had promised to find – a sign that Smudge had breathed his last oxygen on this continent. He sighed. So much had happened that he wasn’t proud of. Worst of all, he felt betrayed by one of the few people he had felt he could believe in.

  The pilot altered the trim on the ailerons and tail flaps, and the plane parted company with the tarmac, gaining hundreds of feet in altitude in a few seconds. As the airport beneath him dwindled, he turned back to face Tatyana, who was watching him with a worried frown on her immaculately made-up face.

  “Why so sad?” she asked.