First Casualty (The Gabriel Wolfe Thrillers Book 4)

by Andy Maslen

  Already, the media were assembling in front of the main building. Vans with satellite dishes on thick telescopic mounts were clustered to one side, and in front of the shallow flight of steps, a dozen or more smartly dressed news presenters were checking levels with their crews or rehearsing short pieces to camera.

  Photographers and reporters were massing in a wedge of notebooks and long lenses several people deep. The workers were being marshalled into a well-organised crowd and the air was alive with good-natured banter about the imminent visit of the Prime Minister.

  Gabriel hung back, finding a spot on the edge and off to one side of the crowd. Behind him, he noticed a stack of plastic crates that presumably had once held components of some kind. They had labels written in German on the side.

  A cold wind had sprung up, raising clouds of fine grit and dust from the concrete in front of the offices. There were complaints and jeering as the workers pulled their coats and jackets tighter around them.

  “Come on, Babs,” a loud male voice called. “We’ve targets to hit, you know.”

  There was a ripple of laughter at this and a medley of other voices joined in.

  “Yeah, come on, Babs. It’s too cold to stand around here. You’ll be losing votes if you don’t hurry up.”

  As if heeding their summons, a British Racing Green Jaguar swept up the access road and in through the gates, followed by a black Range Rover with all the windows except the front windscreen blacked out. The latter vehicle disgorged its passengers first: a squad of four six-footers. They were lean but blocky men with regulation short haircuts, watchful eyes and curly wires leading from their right ears inside their jacket collars.

  Moments later, the driver of the Jaguar got out and opened the rear door for his passenger. And there she was. One of the most powerful democratic politicians in the world. And possibly one of the most corrupt.

  Barbara Sutherland.

  42

  Big Game Hunting

  AT once, there was an electronic clattering as every one of the photographers pressed their shutter buttons. Above the whirring of the cameras and the calls for Barbara Sutherland to, “look this way, please, Prime Minister,” one of her media minders called for silence and patted the air with her hands. The crowd fell silent and Barbara Sutherland smiled out at them, her lipstick a bright slash of scarlet in the dismal, grey, winter light. She waited a few seconds and then began her speech.

  From the back of the crowd, Gabriel turned away and stacked a couple of the plastic crates on top of each other. He climbed up and turned back to face Sutherland. He stood erect, removed his cap and folded his arms. Then he simply waited.

  While Sutherland continued with her crowd-pleasing messages about support for British industry, ensuring competitiveness abroad and job security at home, he let his eyes rove left and right, monitoring the security detail. Like him, they were watchful, scanning the crowd, looking for trouble. But they were alert to sudden movements, figures rushing towards the Prime Minister, arms drawn back, hands clutching solid objects. Gabriel kept completely still.

  Then came the moment he’d been waiting for. Sutherland was talking about the need to remain vigilant against destabilising forces. She meant militants within the trade union movement, but it was an apt phrase for the role Gabriel had adopted. As she swept the crowd with her gaze, she spotted him.

  She stumbled over her words, mispronouncing the name of the firm’s managing director. Gabriel held her gaze then broke eye contact. He stepped off the boxes and moved back, away from the crowd. Reaching a gap between two long steel-clad sheds, he turned back. She had resumed her speech, but even at this distance he could see a flush had crept up her neck. He waited for her eyes to lock back onto his own. They did. He walked away to his left and found a quiet spot to sit out the rest of the speech.

  After another five minutes or so, the crowd clapped and whistled dutifully. Gabriel knew from his research that a quick tour of the plant was scheduled before the Prime Minister would be whisked on to her next appointment. He circled around the perimeter of the factory and made his way to the front of the building, where the cars were parked.

  From behind a container left by a delivery truck, he watched as the Prime Ministerial party emerged from the doors of the factory. She shook hands with the managing director, a slim, short, bespectacled man with thinning sandy hair. Then, batting away a volley of questions from the journalists, she strode towards her Jaguar.

  Her staff may not have realised the significance of her rapid glances to left and right, but Gabriel did. He stepped out from the cover of the container, directly into her eyeline. Once again, she caught his eye and this time she made a move. Pulling one of her minders to one side, she pointed to the container. Gabriel tensed, ready to run. But there was no need. She was coming on her own, marching towards him on her high heels, not stumbling despite the gravelly surface.

  “Gabriel Wolfe,” she said, smiling for the first time. “What the bloody hell are you doing here, my love? Are you stalking me or something? You could always deliver your report in the normal way. I might even pour you a glass of that Burgundy you like so much.”

  “Two questions, Barbara,” he said. “Have you ever owned diamonds? Who or what is Gordian?”

  Her eyes gave nothing away. “Only the one on my finger,” she said, brandishing her left hand at him, “and I haven’t the faintest idea. What happened in Zimbabwe? Did you do what I asked?”

  “I’m sure you know that I did. But I didn’t manage to complete my own mission. W –” he checked himself, “I was intercepted. Twice. I thought you might know something about that.”

  “Look, Gabriel, love. I have no idea what you’re on about and I really can’t stop to chat. It looks pretty bloody odd my coming over here, anyway. I had to tell my lads I’d come over faint and needed a moment on my own. Come and see me at Number Ten. Tomorrow. Early, say seven a.m. I’ll have someone rustle us up a couple of bacon sandwiches.”

  Then she turned and picked her way across the weedy expanse of hard standing back to her puzzled-looking crew of minders. Moments later, the Jaguar and its Range Rover escort sped away through the gates leaving a cloud of petrol fumes hanging in the damp air behind them.

  *

  Gabriel was parked in a little square on the east side of London’s Smithfield market by noon. He walked the few hundred yards to The Raven and pushed the front door open. Inside, he was greeted by the familiar smell of apples. Very little daylight penetrated the reception area of the hotel, and for that reason the staff always kept electric lights burning, which gave the place the air of being perpetually evening.

  “Good afternoon, Mr Wolfe,” the female receptionist said with a wide smile. “I’m afraid we’re full tonight. But . . .”

  “I don’t need a room, thanks, Martina. Has somebody left a parcel for me?”

  She bent to look beneath the counter and straightened again, holding a cardboard carton the size of a large shoebox. The top was marked F.A.O. G.WOLFE in black marker pen.

  “Here you are,” she said. “Be careful. It’s heavy.”

  “Thanks,” he said, taking the box from her with both hands. “I’ll see you soon.”

  Back at the car, he resisted the urge to open the carton and instead laid it on the floor of the boot, then spread a picnic blanket over it. He needed a base where he could examine its contents and formulate a more detailed plan.

  He called Britta. The phone went straight to voicemail. He adopted a servile tone.

  “Oh, yes, hello, Miss Falskog? This is the West London Game Meats Company. Your leg of antelope is being delivered by one of our drivers later this afternoon. You’ll need to be in to sign for it. Thanking you.”

  Then he started the car and pulled away from the square, heading for the Thames and then west towards Chiswick.

  For the middle of the day, the traffic through London was moving fast. Using steering wheel, accelerator and brakes with equal vigour, he made it through t
he centre and onto the A4 dual carriageway running west to the M4 motorway in thirty minutes.

  Ten minutes after that, he was pulling up outside the converted Victorian house where Britta lived. He got out and tried the doorbell. There was no light on the other side of the stained glass, no blurry figure coming to let him in. So he turned and went to wait in the car.

  After four hours, he was beginning to wonder whether he should quit and find a cheap hotel when an Air Force-blue Saab convertible raced up the road and slid in behind his car with a protesting squeal from the tyres. He slid down in his seat.

  There was a loud rapping on the passenger window. He looked over and let out a sigh of breath he’d been unconsciously holding in: Britta. He climbed out, and she ran round the back of the car and threw her arms around him.

  “Oh, Jesus, you’re a sight for painful eyes! I got your message. Come on. Let’s go inside.”

  He laughed at the way her English idiom buckled under stress, kissed her hard on the lips then let her lead him inside, stopping briefly to retrieve the package from the boot.

  Over coffee with a shot of brandy poured into it, he explained where he’d been and what he’d been up to.

  “And she didn’t call the cops or set her attack dogs on you?” Britta asked.

  “Nope. In fact, if you took what she said at face value she gave nothing away. She acted surprised, but then why wouldn’t she? Last thing she knew I was in Mozambique looking for Smudge, then I turn up at her photo opportunity like Banquo’s ghost.”

  “What did you ask her again?”

  He took a sip of the strong, alcoholic coffee. “I asked her if she owned any diamonds, just to see if she’d give anything away, not because I thought she’d own up to having a bucketful of blood-diamonds under the bed. And I asked her if she knew what or who Gordian was.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said no diamonds. Apart from her engagement ring. And she claimed not to know about Gordian. Who aren’t on the web, by the way.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything. Half the people I investigate aren’t on the web. Or not the surface web anyway.”

  “The which, now?”

  “The surface web. Where the companies and bloggers and social media sites are. All the cat videos and inspirational quotes are indexed so search engines can find them. But there’s a whole other web, called the deep web. All the stuff search engines can’t see. Most of it’s harmless: corporate intranets, stuff you find using search boxes, broken links. But there’s one part of the deep web where all the really bad shit happens.”

  Gabriel frowned. “There’s pretty bad shit on the surface web, isn’t there?”

  “Yes. But we’re talking arms dealers, drugs, protection, assassins, some truly evil people who do stuff with women and children you do not ever want to have to see, believe me. And that’s called the dark web. Stuff they intentionally hide. You need a special browser called Tor to find it. And even then, you have to know a ton of entry codes and passwords. I can do some digging there for you. See if Gordian comes up.”

  “That would be good. Because without concrete evidence and my gut feeling, what have I got, really? The last words of a man trying to save his own skin? His embittered widow and an alleged dossier I never saw?”

  “Yes. And two separate attempts to kill us, don’t forget.”

  “I haven’t, believe me. I thought you’d bought it back there.”

  “I know. My chest is still bruised, you know. I might have to get you to take a look later.” She grinned. “If you can bear it.”

  He frowned, then nodded. “I should think I could manage that.”

  She grinned, then pointed to the cardboard box.

  “What have you got there? Cake?”

  “Something Don left for me at The Raven.”

  “Come on then,” she said. “Open it.”

  Gabriel placed the box on a coffee table and ran his thumbnail down the tape holding the flaps closed. He pulled them open and bent them back. Under a folded sheet of bubble wrap was what he had hoped to see. A SIG Sauer P226 semi-automatic pistol. Next to it, a spare box magazine. And next to that, denting the layer of bubble wrap beneath the pistol, a white cardboard box about five inches square. He eased the top off to reveal the blunt copper noses of fifty 9 x 19 mm Parabellum rounds.

  43

  Rooftop Safari

  BRITTA picked up the pistol and dropped the magazine out from the butt. It was full. She slotted it back into place.

  “Nice,” she said, weighing it in her hand and then aiming it at an Andy Warhol soup can print on the wall. “What’re you going to do with that? Kill Sutherland?”

  “No. But it might help focus her mind on answering my questions.”

  “I thought she already did that. You said she denied it all.”

  “She did,” he said, pushing twenty rounds home against the spring of the spare magazine. “But I didn’t believe her. Besides, what else is she going to say in a public space? ‘Oh, yes, I’m up to my elbows in African blood thanks to my illegal dealings in conflict diamonds and arms contracts.’“

  Britta clanked the pistol down on the coffee table.

  “What makes you think she’ll answer any differently just because you’re pointing a nine-mil in her face?”

  He shrugged. “Honestly? I don’t know. But I’m running out of inspiration, so unless you have any better suggestions, I’m going with that.

  “How about come to bed?”

  He smiled. “That’s definitely a better suggestion. For now, at least.”

  Upstairs, Britta led Gabriel along the hallway to her bedroom. More Scandinavian style: white bed linens, a bedstead made from what looked like wrought iron and driftwood, pale abstract prints on the wall. She undressed him then pushed him back onto the bed.

  “This is the first time I’ve had sex with a man I was in love with,” she said.

  “You never loved Per, then?”

  “Mr Super-cop? No, I never loved him. Not really. Even when we were together, he was a borderline asshole.”

  Under her indigo jeans and white T-shirt, Britta was wearing plain white cotton underwear. She unsnapped her bra and shimmied out of her knickers, then joined Gabriel on the bed.

  Their lovemaking was tender, rather than passionate. Almost as if they wanted to try out this new way of being together carefully, without spoiling it.

  When she reached her climax, she cried out his name. He finished a few moments later, arching his back as he reared above her, before lowering himself to one side and burying his face in the curve of her neck.

  After her breathing had stilled, she spoke.

  “Seriously, Gabriel, are you sure this plan of yours is a good idea? It’s pretty much a losing bet, whichever way you look at it. If she’s innocent, then you’re never going to work for Don again. In fact you’ll be lucky to escape prison. And if she’s guilty as charged, you’re giving her even more of a reason to get rid of you.”

  Gabriel folded his arms behind his head and stared at the ceiling.

  “But that’s the trouble, don’t you see? If I do nothing, and it was her behind those attacks on us in Mozambique, she’s just going to try again. At least if I confront her, I have a chance of finding out the truth. Yes, if I’ve screwed up then I’m finished as an operator for The Department. I’ll probably have to leave the country. But if I’m right, then she just becomes the enemy. I have to believe that somewhere in this country there are people who’ll help me.”

  “Well, here’s one for a start. Now, all that,” she reached down and gave him a squeeze, “has made me hungry. I fancy pizza. Something with lots of chilli.”

  *

  Once the delivery boy had taken his tip in exchange for the flat cardboard box containing their dinner, Britta closed the door and brought the pizza over to the kitchen table. With a couple of glasses of Chianti poured, they ate.

  “You need anything else for your little adventure?” she said, through
a mouthful of pizza. “Knife? Disguise? Lock picks?”

  “I brought a knife.” He showed her his treasured ceramic tactical knife that he’d ‘liberated’ from the SAS when he resigned his commission and managed to bring out of Zimbabwe. “As for a disguise, I doubt anything that would work for you would work for me. Unless . . .”

  “What?”

  “Have you got any wigs?”

  She laughed. “Oh, I have some very lovely wigs. Would you like to see?”

  “After this, yes please. And if you can spare a set of lock picks, I wouldn’t say no.”

  The pizza consumed, the wine drunk, they returned to Britta’s bedroom. She pulled open the second drawer in her dressing table and pulled out three wigs.

  “OK,” she said, pulling the first wig on, a long blonde one, straight as cornstalks. “You have your basic glamorous nightclub look. Probably not for you, hey?”

  He smiled, and shook his head. “Not this time.”

  “No. Didn’t think so. Then there’s this one.” She bent her head over the still-open drawer and swapped wigs before turning round to face him again in a curly, shoulder-length black number. “Ta da! Rock chicks rule.” She growled out this last sentence.

  He wrinkled his nose and shook his head again. “Too much hair to get in my eyes.”

  “Huh! Beggars can’t be choosers, you know. Fine, this is the last one.” She swivelled round, swapped wigs once more, then posed in front of him, hands on hips. “I call this one ‘the Swedish pixie’. You like it?”

  He took his time appraising the final option. It was short and straight, pale blonde, framing her face like the cap on an acorn. Then he smiled.