by Andy Maslen
His heart was thumping and he pulled away from Eli as she tried to turn him to face her. On the other side of the car park the sea was roaring in over the stony beach, the sound a harsh ‘shush’ as if even the sea wanted him to pipe down.
‘There’s nothing you can do, Gabe,’ she said. ‘Callie’s right.’
He placed his hands gently on her shoulders and looked into those amazing grey-green eyes.
‘You’re wrong. There’s always something I can do.’
He pulled his car keys from his jeans pocket and dangled them in the foot or so of air between them.
‘I’m going for a drive.’
‘Want some company?’
He shook his head. Smiled at her.
‘No thanks. I need to clear my head. Tell them, would you?’
He kissed her softly on the lips, then climbed into the Camaro and started the big V8 with an unnecessary but satisfying jab downwards on the throttle. He backed out of his drive, across the road and then, slewing round in a tight circle that inscribed black circles on the tarmac, headed back into Aldeburgh. And onwards.
57
CHILTERN HILLS, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
Gabriel cruised along the Missenden Road, heading for the little village of Ellesborough, deep in the Buckinghamshire countryside. This landscape couldn’t have been more different from those he’d seen in Africa. Thick green vegetation, tall hedges, round-shouldered oak trees, blush-red roses clambering over ancient brick walls.
The entrance to the lane was so discreet he almost missed it. But the change in light where the lane interrupted the tall hedge caught his eye and he slowed to a crawl.
Two small steel signs, navy-blue with the legend PRIVATE NO ADMITTANCE in white paint were set into the neatly clipped sides of the hedge. Beyond the gap, a brick wall in an intricate pattern like fretwork, stretched away towards a brick-built lodge house.
He checked the map on his phone. Yes. This was it. Half a mile to the west lay the imposing country house he’d come to visit.
A mile further on he found a lay-by, and pulled in, the Camaro’s fat tyres scrunching over the gravelly mud. He popped the boot lid and changed his boat shoes for the hiking boots he always kept there. He grabbed a go-bag containing a pair of compact Zeiss binoculars and a Böker combat knife and shrugged it on.
He checked his phone battery: 89%. Good. He’d checked and double-checked the voice-recorder app and it worked just fine.
Like all the best plans, his was simple. And flexible. No specific tactics, just get inside, find Tammerlane, isolate him, force him to confess, take the recording to Callie and Stella. Job done.
Gabriel climbed over a stile and into a field. The big house was visible on the horizon. Over terrain this friendly, he reckoned on fifteen minutes maximum to reach the target.
A herd of inquisitive bullocks wandered towards him. He kept on in a straight line towards Chequers, clapping his hands and shooing the docile beasts as he came within shouting distance. They scattered before him, bumping into one another and lowing in panic as they collided with each other.
In spite of himself, he saw the humour in their attempts to first befriend and then escape from this marauding human, and laughed. The sound only served to scatter them again and he ended up running through the centre of the animals along a wide processional path they had inadvertently created for him.
Ahead, a small copse of birch and hazel trees offered a convenient observation point. In the cover they provided, he fetched out his binos and surveyed the front of the house and then the sides.
Initially he saw nothing beyond the stately home’s imposing architecture of the red-brick Tudor house. Then, from the left-hand corner, he saw what he had been expecting, if not hoping, to see. One of Tammerlane’s new internal security goons wandered round to the front door, checked it, then continued on a circuit around the outer wing of the house.
A second man appeared as his partner disappeared, like the the old couple in a weather house. He repeated the sequence of moves in the opposite direction.
Twenty seconds from side to side. Then a gap of four minutes fifteen seconds, then the first guy turned up. Both men were no doubt armed with pistols, but their gait suggested they were less than fully alert. Out here, in the depths of the countryside, maybe they felt safe. There’d be more men inside, Gabriel assumed.
With the second man gone, Gabriel sprinted across the open ground towards the front of the house. He arrived at the front door twenty seconds later. Three minutes fifty-five seconds left.
He raised the heavy iron ring and slapped it against the raised iron boss bolted to the door. Three sharp knocks. Nothing obviously coded, but confident nonetheless.
His heart was pounding and he felt the familiar kick from the adrenaline surging through his bloodstream. He checked his watch.
Three minutes, twenty.
Come on, come on!
Three minutes, five.
He heard footsteps on the far side of the iron-banded oak.
Two minutes fifty-eight.
The door swung inwards at speed.
Gabriel sprang through the gap, arm coming up, fist clenched. The man on the other side didn’t stand a chance. His mouth was open to ask a question, but he never got as far as the first letter of the first syllable. Gabriel’s closed fist hammered into the soft tissue of his throat, smashing into his larynx.
The man staggered backwards, dropping his pistol as he clutched both hands around his throat. Eyes popping, he could only look in shock as Gabriel pulled the door closed behind him and delivered a sharp blow to the side of his head that felled him like a tree.
Gabriel stuck the pistol in the back of his waistband, and dragged the unconscious man by his heels into a recess behind the stairs in the vast hallway.
Breathing heavily, he straightened and scanned the exit points from the hallway. Where are you, Tammerlane? Where’s your conference room?
The hallway, dominated by a glossy black grand piano with the lid resting on its stay, offered several exits. Gabriel pulled the pistol from his waistband and checked it. A Glock 19, full mag, ready to go. On the balls of his feet to minimise the sound, he ran down a corridor hung with dusty old oil paintings of generals and nobleman from a bygone age.
He saw a door to his right and stopped, pressing his ear against the polished wood. Nothing beyond but silence, broken, just, by the ticking of a grandfather clock.
He ran on. The corridor doglegged and he came to a second door, guarded by two enormous floor-mounted vases as tall as he was, in some sort of liver-coloured stone. Porphyry! The word flew unbidden into his mind.
He listened at the door. Nothing but the rushing of blood in his ears like the North Sea surf back in Aldeburgh.
He heard voices. A man and a woman. They were coming his way.
‘When’re they breaking?’ the male said.
‘Don’t know. Twelve? Half-past?’
‘Don’t they ever get tired of gassing?’
The female laughed.
‘Not this lot. It’s what the comrades love best, isn’t it?’
Their footsteps grew louder.
Gabriel estimated he only had seconds.
He looked back the way he’d come. Nowhere to hide in the arrow-straight passageway. He flattened himself into the six-inch-deep recess housing the door he’d just checked.
The guards turned into his portion of the corridor. Still bitching about their masters, like guards the world over.
Gabriel counted their footsteps.
One, two, three, four…
He stepped out.
Smiling broadly, he asked the female guard, ‘Where’s the loo, please?’
She frowned. Struggling to process the appearance of a clearly unauthorised guest, she paused before answering.
Pausing was the wrong choice.
Gabriel caught her across the left temple with the Glock, felling her like a stunned calf. He drove his left elbow into the male guard’s solar p
lexus, emptying his lungs so thoroughly that he collapsed to the ground clutching his stomach, utterly failing to drag so much as an angel’s breath of air into his temporarily paralysed lungs.
Gabriel struck down with a chopping hand, sending him into the darkness with a blow that struck a nerve-rich area at the base of his skull. He relieved both guards of their pistols, kept one and dropped the other into an elephant’s foot umbrella stand beneath a mullioned window. He took a bunch of cable ties from his go-bag and bound them, ankles to wrists.
He’d been inside the house for over five minutes now and time was against him.
He ran on, assuming, hoping, really, that the conference rooms would all be on the ground floor, the upper storeys being reserved for bedrooms and the old servants’ quarters.
A low murmur brought him to a stop. Ahead, the corridor opened out into a square hallway. A door on the far side led to the gardens. But on the left side of the square space, between two imposing suit of armour complete with ten-foot pikestaffs, was another door.
Beyond it, clearly audible without the need to press his ear against its polished surface, Gabriel heard murmurs, laughter and then, crowing in that familiar confident tone, the voice of Joe Tammerlane.
Gabriel grasped the brass door knob and twisted it, then, a pistol in each hand like an old-time gunslinger, he entered the room.
58
Despite, or perhaps because of, the grandeur of the house in which the room was located, Tammerlane had fitted it out like any one of millions of anonymous conference rooms in hotels the world over.
Whiteboard easels, flipcharts and a laptop coupled to a projector filled the space not occupied by Tammerlane and the members of his inner circle.
Gabriel recognised a handful from the brief moments he’d spent watching television news.
To Tammerlane’s left sat Tracy Barnett-Short, the secretary of state for defence. To her left, Ariane Hooper, the home secretary who had done so much in such a short space of time to demoralise and antagonise the police, the prison service and the security agencies.
The men he was less sure of, although one face he did recognise. The secretary of state for the Environment, whose sanctimonious interviews in the election had had even the normally supportive papers questioning his sincerity.
Gabriel heeled the door closed behind him.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said, holding the pistols wide so everyone in the room would feel they were being aimed at. ‘My name is Gabriel Wolfe and I have come here to end your little shit-show.’
The seated politicians all bore an identical expression. One part shock, one part bafflement, one part hatred. Teeth bared. Eyes wide. Faces pale. A couple of the men were grasping the arms of their chairs as if to rise. Gabriel swung the gun barrels in their directions and they sat back down.
‘Look, friend,’ Tammerlane said, his voice smooth, unwavering, calming, ‘I don’t know who you are or what you think we’ve done, but there’s really no need for the guns.’ He half-rose from his chair. ‘Why don’t you—’
‘Sit down!’ Gabriel barked, deriving satisfaction from the speed with which Tammerlane’s rear end hit the seat cushion.
‘Fine, fine,’ Tamerlane said, his voice having risen in pitch by a semi-tone. ‘Look, I’m sitting. Now, everyone stay calm, OK? What is it you want, Gabriel, was it?’
Gabriel walked to the end of the boardroom table they were sitting at and took up a commanding position where he could see each one of them and the door.
He leaned forwards and spoke directly to Tammerlane.
‘I know about your little business deal with Julius Witaarde and Horatio Bokara.’
Tammerlane’s lips twitched. A tiny movement. But Gabriel caught it. He’d been trained to catch it.
‘I know who Horatio Bokara is, obviously, but the other one?’
‘Your other friend from Balliol College, Oxford. Julius Witaarde, which means White Earth, by the way, although I’m sure you know that.’
‘What is this about, Joe?’ Barnett-Short asked. ‘You did go to Oxford, right?’
‘Shut up, Tracy,’ he said.
‘No need to be rude to the lady,’ Gabriel said. He turned and pointed his left-hand Glock at Barnett-Short. ‘Go on,’ a beat, ‘Tracy. Ask him your question again.’
‘Who is Julius Witaarde, Joe? And what’s this about you and Bokara?’
‘Witaarde is nobody. I don’t know anyone by that name. Look,’ he jerked his chin at Gabriel. ‘The man’s obviously insane. He’s a fantasist.’
‘Am I?’ Gabriel asked. He addressed the room as if giving a presentation. ‘Julius Witaarde was, until recently, the leader of two distinct, but interrelated groups. One, Boerevryheid an Regte, is a white separatist movement in South Africa. The other, which finances both that group and some of your boss’s own efforts, doesn’t have a name, but it’s an ivory poaching operation stretching from Botswana to Laos and into mainland China.’
‘This is just ridiculous!’ Tammerlane said, but his eyes gave him away. They were wild and his breathing was coming in short gasps.
‘No. It isn’t ridiculous at all,’ Gabriel said. ‘It was this man’s friends who murdered the four British paratroopers last month, along with three members of the Botswana Defence Force Anti-Poaching Unit.’
One of the men, Aldon Hayter, that was it, was staring with frank curiosity at Tammerlane.
‘Joe, it’s not true, is it?’
‘Look at him,’ Gabriel said. ‘Look at his face. Can’t you see? Of course it’s true.’
Hayter stared at Tammerlane, and Gabriel was gratified to see the other people doing the same.
Tammerlane straightened in his chair. He ran a hand over his hair, smoothing it into place. Then he swept the others with a gaze all the more dangerous for the friendliness in that famous, Instagram-worthy smile.
‘Comrades. A bloodless revolution would have been preferable. But sometimes the greater good calls for sacrifices,’ he said, still smiling. ‘Think of the good we’re doing for this country. Of the good we will do.’
Then he turned towards the door and yelled:
‘Guards!’
He turned back to Gabriel, his eyes flashing, a triumphant grin on his face.
‘Yes, you’re right. I do know Julius. And Horatio. I know all about the unfortunate business in Botswana. But one can’t run a revolution on buttons, Gabriel. Projects like mine need money. Real money. With big business against me, where else was I to find it?’
Gabriel watched with interest as the other occupants of the table drew away from Tammerlane. Chairs had scraped back, torsos were leaned away from him.
‘Witaarde is dead,’ Gabriel said. ‘So are his men. The Botswanans have shut your evil little operation down.’
Tammerlane’s gaze flicked to the door and back.
‘They’re not coming,’ Gabriel said. He held up the pistols. ‘Where do you think I got these from?’
‘How can you criticise me for what we did out there? I’m transforming a country of seventy-plus million people. How can you weigh that against the deaths of five men and find me wanting?’
‘Five men and one woman.’
Tammerlane shook his head.
‘No. Julius called me. It was only men out there.’
‘I’m not talking about out there,’ Gabriel said, levelling his right arm towards Tammerlane.
‘What are you talking about then?’ Hooper asked.
‘Princess Alexandra.’
‘What?’
He turned to her, but kept one pistol pointed straight at the bridge of Tammerlane’s nose.
‘He hired a Syrian contractor killer called Nazir Aboud al-Javari to assassinate Princess Alexandra. That’s how he was able to time his intervention so precisely.’
‘You’re crazy,’ Tammerlane said.
Gabriel shook his head. Time for his bluff. The only weak card in his hand.
‘No I’m not. I killed al-Javari. But before he died, he
confessed. I recorded him. It’s what the police call a dying declaration. It’s acceptable in a court of law.’
Tammerlane shook his head. Smiled. He actually smiled. Gabriel felt an urge to empty both Glocks into his grinning face.
Five and a half thousand miles due south, Klara Witaarde was on the phone, talking to a Russian hacker she knew, simply, as WhiteKnight.
‘Check your account. The money should be there,’ she said.
She waited. Outside, she could hear Ruud butchering hogs. Their squeals, cut off and transformed into a gurgle, soothed her.
As Klara counted the number of death-screams Ruud drew from the pigs, WhiteKnight came back on the line.
‘It’s there. Thank you. You want me to hit the green button?’
‘With all your might.’
Klara watched as the little animated globe on her laptop screen spun, before coming to a stop.
‘OK, it’s up,’ WhiteKnight said. ‘Copies to Wikileaks, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, the BBC, Reuters, links on Twitter, Facebook, basically everywhere.’
Klara Witaarde checked the major global news sites, and her social media feeds, as her late husband’s covert audio and video recordings went live, then viral, then global.
One video in particular would do the job, she felt. She played it again. Julius had shot it from a hidden camera in a bag. His voice was rendered with perfect clarity. As was the man he was speaking to, whose face was framed by the fuzzy eclipse of the slit in the leather through which the tiny lens protruded.
Tammerlane smiled at Gabriel.
‘You’re mistaken. I had absolutely nothing to do with her death. You saw me. I was on the TV. I explained what happened. I killed the assassin. The Jew,’ he said. ‘Now, look, I admitted to the business with Julius. But I’m afraid you have no chance at all of getting that to stick. Not least because you won’t be leaving here except in the back of a police car. And I—’
‘Er, Joe. You need to check Twitter,’ Hayter said, in a quiet voice.
The man was staring at his own phone, not looking away from its glowing screen even as he talked. Apart from Gabriel, everyone seated before him took out their phones. He heard a few gasps.
