The passageways were damp, dimly lit tunnels of pipes and metal, which tallied with everything else I’d seen so far, but it was trippier down here; strange graffiti on the walls looked otherworldly in the flickering light and red emergency lighting. Faded Nineties neon paint ran down the walls, a ghost train of badly painted Simpsons characters and Sharpied quotes in German, lots about Dieter and Franke and other random Germans, their feelings on ex-Chancellor Helmut Kohl, long-gone band names, all from when the boat had been laid up at the end of the Cold War. Drop acid not bombs one piece said, I stumbled onward through a twisting crack den retro Laser Quest, both propelled and hampered by Marseille’s finest Moroccan resin, swaying along the central passageway running fore and aft at the deck level of the superstructure. Doc had told me our rooms were belowdecks, in the dark belly of the ship, with engineering, workshop, and of course the engines.
A radio was playing somewhere, tinny noises rolling and bouncing around the steel corridors rendering the song unintelligible. It was coming from an open doorway ahead painted up as a huge mouth. Beyond it the passage continued to a crossroads. The lights flickered again and went out.
I pressed my arms out either side and braced against the clammy walls. Dim red emergency lighting ahead illuminated the floor and the bulkhead. I shuffled along the rubbery non-slip flooring, glancing into the mouth-doorway – a comms room, the radio tuned to some obscure station, a crackling and indistinct German voice, all staccato commands. A burst of static, a song cut in, ‘99 Red Balloons’. The radio crackled again and cut out completely, quiet but for the ever-present crash of waves reverberating round the hull. In the pauses between them I became aware of voices seeping out of the spaces between the rivets, as if the ship itself were whispering.
Ahead of me in the passageway something caught my eye. I stopped, eyes straining into the darkness.
‘Hey, any chance you know where the stairs are?’
Something flitted across the passageway ahead. I rushed forward, grabbing the bulkhead and swinging through into the cross-passage running the width of the superstructure. I squinted into the darkness. Empty, a single door at the end leading back outside. I walked over to it, tried the handle. Locked. I was about to turn and check when the emergency lighting cut out completely, the passageway went black. I tried to follow the wall back but slipped and fell as the deck tilted.
‘Tyler?’
The emergency lights kicked back in. Poubelle was standing in the middle of the crossroads back along the passage.
I rolled over and used the wall to climb to my feet. ‘Health and safety nightmare.’
The lights cut out again for a couple of seconds, when they came back on Poubelle was swaying next to me. He pointed up at a bulb encased in a metal cage on the ceiling. ‘We have shorts everywhere, she doesn’t like rough weather.’ He put a hand out to steady me. ‘Or passengers.’
‘She?’
‘Has no one told you? You shouldn’t be wandering around alone down here in the dark.’ He mock-shivered and laughed, but the humour didn’t quite make it to his eyes.
‘Tell me about it, my lawyers will be in touch.’
He smiled, the lights flickered again, the smile dropped. ‘This is a ghost ship.’
I frowned. ‘Leave it out.’
‘It’s true.’ He beckoned for me to follow him. ‘Found adrift off Kolobrzeg in ’83, no trace of the crew.’ We walked back round the corner, he knocked on the open door to the radio room. ‘Hey Nic!’ he shouted.
I stumbled after him into the light spilling from a doorway, saw a young guy I swear hadn’t been there a minute before. He took off a pair of earphones and turned from the ship’s radio.
‘Captain says to holler the instant you hear anything, got it?’ said Poubelle, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at me. ‘He says be on the lookout, no telling what this asshole’s got us into.’
‘Expecting trouble already?’ I asked.
‘His words, not mine.’ He closed the radio room door, painted with fangs that completed the mouth, and turned the other way. ‘Yeah, they think the crew abandoned ship when she lost power in rough weather, but who knows. They were never found.’ He waited for me at the top of a narrow stairway.
‘Bollocks.’
‘Google that shit. Then there’s the first mate who went mad in ’87, stabbed four crew members to death before they locked him in the hold. Found him hanging in there when they arrived in port.’ He smiled. ‘No one knows why.’
‘Poubelle!’
I turned to see Miller striding along the passageway. ‘Get below and help Seb with that ballast valve,’ he shouted. Poubelle nodded, I watched him descend into the flickering belly of the ship. ‘Superstitions, give me strength.’
‘I knew I should have taken the Chunnel,’ I said.
‘I’d rather you had.’
‘Little bit of gratitude wouldn’t go amiss, you know. I did just stop us sinking.’
‘Don’t over-egg it, you checked the ballast tank for water is all.’
He started to walk down the stairs, I grabbed his shoulder and turned him back. ‘It was sabotaged.’
‘Bullshit, these things happen…’
‘I went in that ballast tank, Miller. I—’
‘Jesus H. Christ, man, God knows the shit living in there. And at sea? What the hell were you thinking?’
‘I found chuddy, Miller. Stuck over the gauge.’
‘Chuddy?’
‘Chewing gum. Someone had stuck it over the end of the pressure gauge pipe so it registered empty.’
He shrugged off my hand. ‘I suppose you can prove that?’
‘I dropped it in the tank.’
He nodded exaggeratedly and rolled his eyes. ‘You expect me to believe someone on board wants to send us to the bottom?’
‘We’re not far from land, worth it if there’s a big enough incentive. The cover was left open to flood the decks, and the bilge pumps were disabled. What are the chances?’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘But like you said, no proof.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then leave the ship to me.’ He walked down the stairs, spun and pointed up at me. ‘You just worry about these friends of yours.’
I followed him down, gripping the rail closely to avoid being pitched over the top of him. We turned at the bottom, past a huge bulkhead and watertight door that looked like it would lead forward towards the cargo hold and bow, but Miller led me back along another passageway aft. We stopped at the far end, cabin doors either side of us and between them, a heavy watertight door – the internal access into what I guessed was the area King and I had explored not long before.
‘Why is this one welded up?’ I asked, knocking on the door.
Miller grinned. ‘Customs hate it, they spend ages trying to open it, I tell them it’s always been like that, they decide it’s suspicious. By the time they’ve got in through the outer hatch and found nothing they usually can’t be bothered to search much more.’ He placed his hand on the door handle to the right. ‘You VIPs have got the master stateroom, you’ll love it.’ He opened the door, a woman inside turned, I looked past her at a man getting up off a bed, they both eyed me warily.
‘I’m Tyler.’ I shook the woman’s hand.
‘Martinez,’ she replied. Despite being slightly shorter than me she was built like an MMA fighter. She’d opted for tactical gear from her native States – which was overkill – and, just like King, finished it off with an ugly-looking knife strapped to one thigh and a holster on the other – which probably wasn’t overkill. The Walther that I guessed usually resided in it sat partially stripped on the bed behind her.
‘Fields,’ said the big guy ambling forward, seemingly the only person that had got the memo on dressing down, though he’d always struggle to travel incognito. Like me, he’d gone with jeans and a T-shirt, but unlike me he’d chosen both a couple of sizes too small to accentuate his physique. ‘What the hell happened to you?’ he asked, Gl
aswegian accent thick and strong. ‘Simple transport job my arse.’
‘Nothing for a big fella like you to worry about.’
‘Aye, right.’ He stuck out his hand suspiciously, I shook it much quicker than Martinez’s as he tried the old alpha crush shit, but I’d already pulled away.
I stepped into the room. A symphony of grey steel and chipped plywood, decorated only with a few grubby pages from porn mags and a Wonder Woman poster, everything draped in a layer of dust. I noticed the beds had sick buckets next to them, though both were empty for now.
‘Master stateroom,’ I muttered, looking at the bent metal bedframes on each side, a wardrobe bolted to the wall, a tired old desk under the greasy porthole. An en-suite peeped through a creaking door, the grimy shower beckoned. ‘This might be worse than the last place I stayed.’
Miller closed the door behind him, leaning back against it. ‘I can see how it mightn’t be as plush as a chalet, but what did you expect?’
I narrowed my eyes. I hadn’t told Miller – or the others – that I’d spent the last couple of weeks in the Alps. What else did he know?
He smiled. ‘It’s my business to find out what I can about my passengers.’ I opened my mouth to speak but he waved a hairy paw, pushing off the door and swaying across the room. ‘Especially when it’s you.’
‘If it helps, our room’s not much better,’ Martinez said, still clinging to the bedframe.
‘And where’s that?’
Miller spoke for her. ‘Just like you asked, right across the way.’ He opened a cupboard above her head and threw a small box at me, I caught it with painful effort and looked at the label: codeine. I nodded my thanks, popped a couple of pills out of the packet.
Fields looked at my torn, bloodstained T-shirt and grunted. ‘You planning on telling us what we’re doing? We’ve been waiting ages in this coffin.’
I dry-swallowed the tablets. ‘That’s what you’re being paid to do.’
‘Well, we’ve been under way for a while now, I think we can ease up on the secrecy.’
I looked at my watch and nodded. ‘It’s time to bring in the cargo.’ I looked at Miller. ‘Show me the hold.’
‘I can,’ said Miller, ‘but there’s a reason I put you in here.’ He waved for Fields to move out of the way, knelt on the floor and reached under the bed. ‘Fuel tanks are below us, three of ’em. It’s overkill for our purposes, this old thing could get halfway round the world back in the day.’ He lifted a flap of grimy carpet to reveal a wooden panel set into the steel deck. ‘Below us is the old centre tank.’ He slid a bolt, lifted the hatch, and shuffled aside.
I knelt and looked down a ladder into the dim room below. Miller reached inside, flicked a huge spider onto the floor, and pressed a switch. I leaned down and put my head inside, brushing away cobwebs. The smuggling hatch was the size of a decent en-suite, illuminated by a couple of caged bulbs on the walls, which were rounded and unbroken but for a filler inlet and vent at the top and drain point in the middle of the floor. The spider scuttled towards the drain, disappearing between the bars of the grille welded across it.
Rum and stale smokes filled my nostrils as Miller’s head leaned in next to me. ‘For extra-special transport.’
I’d planned on using the hold, but this was too good to pass up. Only a few metres square but the bare walls and single entry point – from beneath my bed, no less – was perfect. I pulled my head out, smiled, and clapped Miller on the back. ‘I don’t care what they say, Miller, you’re okay sometimes. Come on, you can give me a hand. Fields, come with me. Martinez, wait here. Be ready.’
‘Ready for what?’ She stood, sliding the magazine into her pistol and cocking it.
I shrugged. ‘Trouble.’
Chapter Twelve
Château des Aigles
Eleven days previously
I stepped out of the shop into the cold evening. The snow had continued all day, the village was getting busier as we approached the holidays. I pulled my hat down low and walked down the steps to the German’s disapproving look.
‘What’s up, Lennon?’
She wasn’t taken with her callsign but they’d stuck, so not much she could do.
‘Was that necessary?’ she asked. ‘I thought you wanted to tail them, not go shopping.’
I pointed at the orange jackets bobbing around further down the street. ‘We could go to the pub for an hour and we’d still find ’em within a couple of minutes. These guys think they’re untouchable.’
‘What did you buy?’
I took the box out of the bag, a fancy new smartwatch with integrated standalone GPS and a host of fitness features.
‘You need to take up jogging, you’re getting old and soft.’
‘Ouch.’
She meant it, too. I dropped it into my rucksack, throwing it on my back. ‘Come on then, let’s see where they’re going.’
The target was easily visible in the glow from the shop windows; Bob had finished his evening ski but unusually he’d headed straight into town after. We’d christened him Bob while poring over the files and McCartney’s surveillance photos. Band Aid had come on the radio and Ringo, the Scot, had cracked a joke that the target was the spit of Bob Geldof. Of course it’d stuck – and prompted a whole host of ridiculous codenames for the other bodyguards.
Sting and Midge Ure stalked on either side of Bob as ever, carrying the gear, with the big bastard Branko – or Bono, as he was now known – bringing up the rear as always, eyes alert for trouble. No prizes for guessing why he was head of their ‘security’, he was the best of the bunch – if by best, you meant the one most likely to give us trouble.
I walked along the top side of the square with Lennon. Past its enormous twinkling tree, lights reflecting off compacted ice in the gutters, past the children shouting and squealing on the small ice rink, through clouds of vin chaud steam, caramelised nuts, stalls selling biscuits and Nutella crêpes.
Lennon squeezed my hand, I saw the Rolls Royce SUV pull up in the corner of my eye, taking up two disabled bays outside a chemist. Sting and Midge loaded the ski gear then climbed inside with Bob. We watched for a couple of minutes as Bono scanned the cars on the road, one hand never straying far from that Desert Eagle nestled under his enormous sweaty pit.
Lennon turned away, starting to walk back to where we’d parked our car, but I grabbed her hand, pulling her back. Bob had ditched the skiwear and emerged in jeans and a shirt. He shrugged on a woollen overcoat and nodded to his two bandmates, now similarly attired. The three of them walked in the opposite direction as the Rolls pulled away. Bono hovered for a few seconds more then followed several paces behind.
‘Call Ringo, tell him we’re off out for tea,’ I said.
She raised a scarred eyebrow, looking herself up and down.
I pointed at the Rolls at the end of the road. ‘They can’t be going anywhere too fancy if they’re walking.’
We followed at a distance, Lennon on the phone to McCartney and Ringo getting out of the bubble lift. Bob looked smaller in his civvies, squeezed in between the two bodyguards.
McCartney had fished out more intel on the core security team. Sting was a Brit ex-para like my brother, with a matching dishonourable discharge, but unlike my brother the reasons were numerous and varied. Midge was ex-Spetsnaz, Russian special forces. Bono, their Serbian head of security, was a wanker with a blurry history of war crimes going back nearly thirty years. The random goons back at the house were mostly deluded thugs, with a few ex-military dregs thrown in. More DDs for those guys, they weren’t exactly a shining endorsement of their respective countries’ armed forces. Dutch, Belgian, Brits, and – like Bob – Aussies. A real mixed bag but they all had something in common; they were all weapons-grade arseholes.
I patted Lennon’s arm, she hung up the phone and accelerated ahead, heading for the restaurant Bono had just disappeared into. Le Cerf Sauvage, a heraldic-looking stag carved above the door scowled down at us.
I
left, doubled back down an alley, came round, waited for a couple of minutes by a jewellery shop window to make sure no one else was following. When I was satisfied I mounted the steps, ignoring the disapproving look from the stag, and pushed through the door.
The warmth hit like a wall, like leaving England in February and stepping off the plane onto a runway in Cuba. A rustic alpine restaurant with a bar at the back, three-quarters full with the type of people who use ‘winter’ as a verb. I took off my jacket and scanned the tables, Bob & Co. had taken over a large booth over by a side window. He was leaning back in his chair, shirt buttons straining, talking loudly to the thugs either side. Lennon was seated four tables away, pretending to look at a menu but I knew she was watching the door in the mirror behind the bar. A waiter smiled and started towards me but I waved at Lennon and swooped over to her.
I put my hand on her back and leaned close to her cheek.
‘Bono is in the toilet,’ she whispered. ‘He kept his coat on.’
I sat on the bench so I could see both the door and Bob’s table. ‘Ten quid says he waits in the car again.’
She nodded in agreement. Bono appeared at the far end of the room, shoulder barging a teenage girl waiting for the toilet. I picked up a menu, occupying my hands to stop myself jumping up and putting a fist through Bono’s face as he strode past us and out the door. Headlights flashed outside the window, he crossed the road and climbed into the Roller that’d just pulled in.
Lennon shrugged out of her Bogner jacket and removed the fleece underneath, quickly smoothing her hair down to cover one side of her face. Contrasting with the expensive jacket, she was wearing one of her various faded racing-brand T-shirts, always long-sleeved to cover the scars. I pulled off my beanie, ruffled my hair, and turned slightly to eye up the Roller. It pulled away from the slushy kerb and reversed into a side street to watch the restaurant. Lennon nudged me.
The waitress had arrived at Bob’s table, his hand hovered behind her skirt. As she bent to take Sting’s order Bob’s hand shot up, she stood bolt upright. He gave her a leer and turned back to the menu.
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