by Andy Maslen
“The nearest coffee shop is back in York,” Hamilton said.
“We’re not going for coffee. Do you have a proving ground out here? A place you show off the toys to the boys who come to do deals?”
Hamilton nodded.
“Two miles down the road. There’s some land we own. Forest, tracks, a mocked up Afghan village, a lake.”
“That’s where we’re going. Same rules apply. You flash your lights at a cop car or hit a panic button and hairs on heads get harmed. OK?”
Hamilton nodded, lips set in a grim line.
59
Reckoning
THE road leading from Gordian’s headquarters to their proving ground was empty, and the sleek British sports car purred along the blacktop without meeting so much as a single oncoming car of any kind, let alone a York PD cruiser or a Pennsylvania state cop doing the rounds.
Checking his rearview mirror, Hamilton flicked on the right indicator and pulled off the highway onto a slip road. The blacktop ran out after half a mile and for the last five hundred yards the Aston’s suspension had to soak up a constant juddering from the rough and ready road surface that led to the proving ground.
Ahead, a pair of steel gates came into view. They were eight feet tall, and topped with razor wire, with more of the lethal fencing stretching away left and right into the scrubby vegetation on both sides. As the car came within thirty yards of the gates, Hamilton slowed. The gates clanked once and swung back silently on their oiled hinges as pneumatic rams pulled them apart.
“Transponder in the engine compartment,” Hamilton said. Clearly he was a perpetual salesman and unable to resist demonstrating a bit of the company’s attention to technological detail.
He accelerated through the gap between the gates and a minute later hit the brakes and brought the car to a stop in the centre of a group of low, white houses through which a wide road snaked. The engine silenced. Hamilton turned in his seat to look at Gabriel.
“Out,” Gabriel said. “Let’s go for a walk.”
As Hamilton exited his side of the car, Gabriel took the Glock from his coat pocket and eased off the safety. Then he followed, pushing the door closed behind him with a damped clunk.
Hamilton was already walking away from the car as Gabriel rounded the bonnet, and he strode with long paces to catch up, Glock pointing at the small of the man’s back.
“Everything we supply is legal,” Hamilton said, a pleading note in his voice. “The weapons systems, the comms, the men. Gordian is involved in peace-keeping, regime-change and legitimate conflicts only.”
“Shut up. I read the copy on your website. I don’t need the pitch a second time. And since when was ambushing British troops based on classified military intelligence legal?”
“She didn’t tell me!” Hamilton said, turning to face Gabriel. “She said there was a rogue team of Special Forces guys down there in Mozambique that had to be taken out. How was I to know you were legit?”
Gabriel ground his teeth together in his efforts not to either speak or drill the man where he stood. When they reached the centre of the mocked-up village, he spoke again.
“Ever been in a place like this for real, Mr Hamilton?”
Hamilton shook his head. “Our operations director is a former Marine, though. He has.”
“Yeah, well I have. And others like it. And it was always OK, fighting the enemy. That’s what we signed up for, that’s what we did. Go in, do your job, get out and go home. And if you lost people, you brought them home with you, buried them, mourned and moved on. But there was this one man, Michael Smith. We called him Smudge. He was killed by Abel N’Tolo’s men when they overran us. You know about N’Tolo, don’t you?” Hamilton’s lips were a thin line. “Don’t you?”
“Yes, I know about him.”
“Of course you do. Because you and Sutherland were helping him seize control of a diamond field, weren’t you?”
“Look, it wasn’t like that,” Hamilton said, lines creasing his forehead. “He wanted the diamond field, of course. But he was the best chance for peace in that part of Mozambique. He –”
“Shut up!” Gabriel barked. “Finish that sentence and I’ll call my associate then gut-shoot you. I assume you know what happens when you get a hollow-point in the stomach?” Hamilton nodded. Said nothing. “Because of the men you tipped off – and supplied – we had to leave Smudge behind. They crucified him. Stood his body against a baobab tree and stuck machetes through his hands and into the trunk. As the chopper took us away from the scene of the firefight I looked down out of the open loading door. Do you know what my last sight of Smudge was?”
“No.”
“A buzzard was sitting on his shoulder, eating his brain through the bullet hole in the back of his head. I went back to find him, as you know, since you tried to have me killed. Twice. But you failed.”
“Look, Gabriel isn’t it? I said I’d double the three million. That was insulting. To you and to Smudge’s memory. I am truly sorry for what happened. It was Barbara, I mean Sutherland who pushed me into it. She’s the prime minister of the UK, for God’s sake. She’s an immensely powerful woman. What can I do to make things right between us?”
“I’ll . . . tell you what . . . you can . . . do to make . . . it right between . . . us,” Gabriel said, altering his breathing patterns and performing a precise and disorientating series of eye movements as he broke his speech patterns into nonsensical fragments. “You can . . . take . . . this Glock 19 . . . and you . . . can . . . stick it . . . in your mouth and . . . pull the . . . trigger . . . you will pull . . . the trigger.”
As Gabriel spoke, he watched Hamilton closely, alive to the minute changes in blood flow through his skin, and the coordination between left and right eyes. Hamilton’s breathing had started to match Gabriel’s own and the lids of his blue eyes were drooping spasmodically as he fought the effects of the ancient hypnotic routine.
“I . . . will . . . pull the . . . trigger,” Hamilton said.
Gabriel smiled and extended his arm towards Hamilton, releasing his own finger from the Glock’s trigger and letting the gun drop slightly so it was pointing at Hamilton’s feet.
As if animated by a puppeteer, Hamilton’s right arm stretched out and his hand closed around the suppressor. He took the pistol from Gabriel, reversed his grip and opened his mouth wide. His eyes were closed all the way now.
Hamilton encircled the end of the suppressor with his lips and hooked his index finger around the trigger.
Then his eyes popped open.
He withdrew the suppressor from his mouth and turned the muzzle to point at Gabriel’s chest.
“No,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll do that after all.” He smiled. “I never was in one of these shitholes with the grunts. That was true. I was CIA. We operated out of a nice air-conditioned office in Guantanamo Bay. I was an interrogator. And guess what? As part of our training, which was very, very good by the way, we were taught how to resist torture. Not just that fairground hypnosis act you just pulled on me, either. I’m talking about the hardcore stuff. Up to and including waterboarding. So fuck you, Mr Wolfe. And fuck Smudge Smith.”
Hamilton straightened his arm and pulled the trigger.
60
With Interest
SUPPRESSED by the GM-9, Hamilton’s shot was still loud enough to startle a flock of roosting birds from a nearby tree.
Gabriel flinched at the muzzle flash.
The particles of burnt propellant that shot towards him stung his nose.
And the projectile hit him dead-centre in his chest.
It bounced off his coat and fell harmlessly to the ground.
Hamilton gasped, looking down at the crumpled and burnt wad of paper lying at his feet.
Then his mouth closed and his lower jaw began to quiver.
Gabriel stepped towards Hamilton, swiped the gun from his hand, and thumbed the magazine release switch. He pulled a second magazine from his coat pocket and inserted i
t into the grip. Racked the slide to chamber a round, and aimed at Hamilton.
“I researched your background. I know all about your CIA training. So guess what? I gave you a blank round. But you know what GSR is, don’t you? Gunshot residue. It’s one of the first things the police look for in an apparent suicide. And now it’s all over your hands.”
“Wait,” Hamilton said, putting his hands out in front of him, palms towards Gabriel. “My children. You’re going to create two orphans.”
“They’ll have their mother. And anyway, I’ve created orphans before. As you have.”
Hamilton opened his mouth to scream.
Gabriel took another step closer to his target, pushed the gun between his teeth and pulled the trigger.
Hamilton’s mouth contained the blast from the pistol, meaning little or no GSR escaped to coat Gabriel’s gloved right hand. The back portion of Hamilton’s skull flew away in a spray of blood, brain and bone fragments that spattered the off-white wall of the nearest house. The body collapsed backwards into the dirt, one knee bent, arms flung out to the sides.
Gabriel knelt and wrapped Hamilton’s right hand around the Glock’s butt, taking care to press the pads of his thumb and fingers against the trigger and the plastic grip. Then he dropped it a few feet in front of the body. Next he typed a short note on Hamilton’s phone and texted it to Trish.
On the short walk back to the Aston Martin, Gabriel called his welcoming committee from York Airport.
“Baylesford.”
“It’s Gabriel Wolfe. I’m done. Can you meet me at the airport?”
“Sure. We’ll be out front.”
“I’ll be two hours.”
Gabriel walked past the Aston. Resisting the urge to gouge the paintwork with a stone, which would undermine somewhat the suicide scenario he’d left for the York Police Department to find, he marched on towards the open gates. He covered the seven miles from the Gordian proving ground to the airport in just under the two hours.
He was met outside by Baylesford and Johnson.
“We’ll need your firearm, sir,” Baylesford said. “And the four-eighty-four, ten-fifty. Can’t very well have you in possession of such a useful document, can we?”
Was that the hint of a smile on the agent’s face? Gabriel thought it might have been. Or maybe the guy was suffering from trapped wind. He handed over the document, the spare magazine, and the remaining rounds of ammunition in their boxes, blanks and hollow-points alike.
“I can’t give you the weapon. I don’t have it any more. If you monitor the York PD radio frequency for a couple of days or just buy the paper, I’m sure you’ll hear of its location.”
The men nodded. A grim expression that said, “we’re not going to ask you any questions, and you won’t tell us any lies”. They walked Gabriel into the terminal building, escorted him through the various uniformed functionaries of the Federal and State Governments standing, literally, between Gabriel and his ride home, then shook hands and left.
Thirty minutes after that, Craig, the Gripen pilot, opened the throttles on the jet and they were airborne.
*
Back in England at half-past-eight that same evening, Gabriel thanked Craig and walked to the car park. The whole exercise had taken less than twelve hours, from takeoff to touchdown.
In the Maserati, Gabriel unlocked Hamilton’s phone and scrolled through the contacts until he came to “S”. There she was. With a photo, too. He composed a text.
Wolfe came to kill me. He’s dead.
Then he pulled out from the access road and into the surrounding network of everyday residential streets that surrounded the school and muttered under his breath.
“One down, one to go.”
61
Speak Truth to Power
MIDNIGHT. Gabriel made a phone call.
“Hello?”
“Britta, it’s me.”
“How come my phone says unknown caller?”
“I’m not using my own phone. It’s more secure that way.”
“Where are you?”
“In a hotel in the Peak District, the Bull, in Hartington.”
“What? Why the fuck are you there?”
“I’m laying a trap and I need your help.”
“OK. What do you need me to do?”
Lying on his back on the flowered bedspread, Gabriel explained what he needed from Britta. They agreed on the meeting time then ended the call.
Gabriel had already transferred Barbara Sutherland’s number from Hamilton’s phone into the one he’d lifted from Sasha Beck’s prostrate form in The Golden Dragon. He used it now, with a voice-changer he’d bought in an electronics shop. When she answered, the Prime Minister sounded guarded to say the least. Gabriel tapped the record button on the call recorder app he’d installed.
“This is an unlisted number. Who are you?”
“I am a friend of Robert Hamilton’s, Prime Minister. I carried out a hit for him on your behalf. I believe he texted you about it.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to meet you.”
“Why? Robert paid you I assume.”
“He did. But I think you can afford to pay a little more.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Robert was a little indiscreet. So now I know about your little arrangement. And I have the dossier Philip Agambe compiled on your dealings in blood diamonds.”
There was a long pause. Gabriel counted it. Ten seconds.
“What do you want?”
“I want to meet you.”
“Impossible. It’s the middle of a session in Parliament. And my diary is solid.”
“I said, I want to meet you. Or shall I send the dossier to the media?”
“No! Don’t do that. Where and when?”
“I thought the Peak District. The day after tomorrow. Seven a.m. I’ll send you a GPS reference.”
“Impossible.” Sutherland’s flat Yorkshire tones still carried authority even though he knew she was on the defensive. “I’m leaving for a trip. India.”
“Cancel it.”
“I can’t just cancel a trip like this. Look, I don’t know who you are, but you clearly don’t know anything about –”
“Cancel it!” Gabriel shouted. Then, quieter. “Have a health scare. A death in the family. Tom fell out of a tree. Children do get hurt, you know.”
At the mention of her son’s name, Sutherland’s own voice became strident. “Don’t you dare threaten my son. I’ll come after you.”
“Yes, you will. To the GPS reference I’m going to send you. And no reinforcements.”
*
Early on in her days as Prime Minister, Sutherland had discovered just how hard it was to meet people privately. Anything official and she could expect to be accompanied by a squad of ministers or civil servants. Anything unofficial and there would be a couple of burly Special Branch officers tailing her, more or less discreetly. Nevertheless, she had found ways to place enough distance between herself and her minders to conduct the occasional meeting on her own.
Such a meeting was in progress now. In a soundproofed room in the Cabinet Office, its walls packed with foil-wrapped insulation to prevent electronic eavesdropping, she sat at a round table opposite David Brown.
“Someone has leaked,” she said. “No, not leaked. Someone has opened the bloody floodgates. I got a call from some bloke in the middle of the night who claims he knows all about us and Robert Hamilton. Said he wants to meet me in the bloody Peak District, for God’s sake.”
“And you’re telling me this, why?”
Her eyes flashed wide. “What do you mean? Why the bloody hell do you think I’m telling you? Because you have to do something about it.”
Brown leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head.
“I’m not sure there’s an awful lot I can do about it, Barbara.” He pushed off from the floor until his chair was canted backwards, and stuck out his feet so the toe-caps of hi
s shoes caught under the table.
“Now, listen to me,” she said, pointing at him. “I still hold the reins of power. And I say you’ll have to think of something.”
He looked at her, without speaking. Then jerked his bodyweight forward and let it pull the chair back onto all four legs with a thump on the thick carpet.
“Shall I tell you about power, Prime Minister?” he said in a quiet voice. “You have a certain brand of power, bestowed upon you by your party and, shall we say, activated by the electorate. You’re only in Parliament because you’re an MP. Those same voters who put you there could choose someone else to represent them and you’d be out of a job. Just. Like. That.” He snapped his fingers, a dry, percussive pop in the acoustically dead room. “Now, take me. In contrast to the precariousness of your own position, I am an appointee. So no worries about my job every five years. The voters might choose, in their infinite wisdom, to elect a pig-ignorant bigot to run this country, or an ex-dinner lady for all I care. But they can’t get rid of me. In fact,” he smiled, a predatory expression that showed his canine teeth, “nobody can get rid of me. You see, I don’t really exist. Not in any way that would make sense to the bureaucrats. You knew that when we first began working together. How else do you think I was able to act on your behalf with some of the people you chose to do business with?”
“But I thought you worked for MI6. That still places you under official power of some kind.”
“I work in MI6. The difference in preposition is small, but significant. Most importantly, it confers on me real power. I have a budget beyond scrutiny. I have highly skilled people at my disposal. And, I have the kind of freedom of action you might wish for but will never acquire.”
“Are you telling me you’re a double agent? Are you working for the Russians?”
He laughed. A genuine sound, warm and amused.
