Dillon arrived at Havelock’s house at 7.45 p.m. He parked outside without any trouble, Havelock having placed police cones in the space for him. He suspected that Morgan would make his own arrangements and most likely be driven by one of his junior staff. He went up the path and rang the doorbell.
Rachel opened the door and throwing her arms around him, gave him a big hug as Havelock appeared behind her. Rachel closed the door and the two men shook hands warmly.
“You’re a bit early. He’s not due for another forty-five minutes.”
“I know. But it’ll give me time to check around the outside and offload that stuff I was telling you about earlier.”
Havelock looked horribly shocked. “I can’t have that gear in my house.”
“Well I can’t leave it in the car and I’m certainly not handing it over to Morgan.” Dillon caught Rachel’s quizzical expression out of the corner of his eye.
“Sorry, Rachel.”
“What’ve you got in the boot of your car? Drugs?”
Dillon looked at Havelock and the following silence suddenly made her realise that she was right.
“Oh, my God. What will we do with them?”
“Dunstan will know,” said Dillon. “It’s evidence and the drugs squad will want it.”
“I’m wondering why they’ve not been involved with this investigation, Jake.”
“It just doesn’t feel right. I suggest that you leave it where it is for the time being until we can sort something out.”
Dillon looked from one to the other in some despair.
“You do realise, Dunstan, that this is likely to turn out to be one of the greatest drug ring busts in European history, and all you can say is keep it in the boot of the Porsche? A type of car that the police pull over as a recreational pursuit. That’s absolutely priceless. Well I’m afraid if you won’t take it, I’ll leave it outside your front door. I simply can’t risk keeping it in the boot until this thing is over.”
“But, Jake, surely it’s over now that you’ve cracked the whole affair wide open.”
Dillon felt deflated. They were now standing in the kitchen.
“If I recall, Dunstan, you asked me not to look into drugs, but how Charlie Hart came by a priceless Vermeer painting stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston. We then progressed to looking at the man himself. I suspect that drugs are only one of his interests and certainly not the main one. I feel like I’ve been going around in circles from the minute I embarked on this assignment. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to check around the outside for any stray spooks. I’ll then bring the stuff in.”
Dillon went out through the back door, down the garden and through a gate in the far wall. He then checked around the narrow street at the side of the property and ended up at the front of the house a moment later. Whilst Dillon collected the canvas holdall from the boot of the Porsche, Havelock stood at the front door watching him. He carried it up the path to where Havelock was standing and brushed past him. Havelock came inside and closed the door behind them. Dillon placed the holdall on the floor and unzipped it, took out one of the plastic containers and peeled back the top, revealing the white powder inside.
“That is what street-ready cocaine looks like. Now try, if you will, to calculate the extent of human misery that this lot could cause.”
Dillon took the holdall and placed it in the cupboard under the stairs.
Havelock was not at all happy about it, but until they met Morgan, could see no alternative. They went into the living room and Rachel poured drinks. Before Dillon sat down he said, “Rachel, would you mind pulling the curtains in all of the rooms facing the front of the property?”
“Do you think that Trevelyan’s men could have followed you here?” Rachel handed Havelock his drink.
“I’d be very surprised if Trevelyan knows I’m here. His problem is that he can only see what he wants to see. His mind gropes around in mist and the semi-darkness. I doubt if it’s ever seen the sunshine. It would never occur to him that I would know someone like you, Dunstan.”
“Who then?”
“Who knows? Dillon knew that he had confused Havelock even further. Havelock liked to keep it simple and always had difficulty in believing the depths that some people will sink to. He collected his drink from Rachel and then drifted over to the window overlooking the street. He went to one side and lifted the side of the curtain with a finger. He stood there for some time, his thoughts interrupted by Havelock asking, “Well? Is there anyone lurking in the shadows out there?”
“If they are, they’re not watching you.” Dillon raised his glass. “Here’s to us and the good times.”
Morgan rang the door bell at exactly 8.30.
Rachel said, “I’ll go and let him in and then disappear to the snug, and watch television.”
Morgan came into the living room with a rush of cold air, handed Rachel his coat and without invite, sat himself down in a vacant armchair. He saw Dillon but gave no sign of surprise.
“If that is your wife, Mr. Havelock, I must compliment you. She is a very lovely lady.”
“Thank you. Please call me Dunstan. After all, we are out of working hours. You’ve already met Jake Dillon, of course.”
“Oh, yes. He’s the chap who roams around England carrying a gun as if he’s the Lone Ranger, blowing holes in Government property and frightening the life out of my men who had been assigned to protect him. I suppose that’s your 911 outside. You’re getting lax, Jake.”
“Bollocks,” Dillon said with a smile. “If they’d told me, I might have believed them. As it was, they even denied that they’d been following me. They’re lucky that I only put a bullet in their radiator.”
Havelock, who knew nothing of the finer details, looked a little perturbed.
“Can I offer you a drink?”
“A brandy would be good, thank you.”
Morgan glowered at Dillon with something approaching a quiet rage.
“You virtually destroyed that car,” he accused. “They had to be towed ten miles to the nearest garage. Running around the countryside shooting at anything that takes your fancy, is not on. And I’ll wager that you’ve not got a licence for it either.”
“No. But as I’m officially down on record as a personal bodyguard to Sir Lucius Stagg, it’s never been an issue.”
Morgan’s features suddenly cracked and he couldn’t resist a smile. He took the drink Havelock handed him.
“You are a born bullshitter, aren’t you? What a load of rubbish. But you know that we would have a hell of a job to prove otherwise.”
His smile broadened and in a completely different tone, “Well done, Jake. You’ve done a brilliant job.”
Dillon placed his drink on the side table next to his chair.
“Well, I never thought you’d be gracious enough to say that.”
“I think that evens everything, gentlemen,” Havelock said as he sat down.
“Now, shall we get down to the real issue in hand?”
Dillon said, “Tell me, Brendon. How did you know? I’ve only told Dunstan, which means you’ve still got his office phone tapped.”
Morgan dismissed the very idea with a shake of his head.
“We’ve been involved with this affair for a very long time. It’s an ongoing investigation which first came to light after the nine-eleven atrocity and a few intercepted phone calls. All the agencies are caught up in it, but without much success. Until, that is, you came on the scene, Jake. Now that we have some pretty concrete evidence we can start to make moves to dismantle the whole enterprise. There are teams already being put together as we speak.”
“What are you saying? That what I discovered in Dorset is the first real evidence you have?”
“Well, you must admit
it was well-hidden and you did have to look hard for it. It’s why we had to have you working with us. You can go where we dare not to tread. Unlike you, Jake, we have to work to the letter of the law.”
Dillon couldn’t help but laugh and Havelock had some difficulty in repressing a smile himself.
“So you’re admitting that a maverick gun-toting cowboy has his uses.”
“Obviously we could not condone your methods publicly. And in less experienced hands there could be real problems. You know this as well as anybody, especially as you’ve been threatening almost everyone you’ve come into contact with since embarking on this enquiry.”
“That’s because almost everybody has either been threatening or wanting to kill me. So where does this thing go from here?”
“There is nowhere to go. There are over forty remaining addresses which we have established as being used as part of the distribution pipeline for the stolen property and drugs. We already knew that Tommy Trevelyan was the catalyst who had brought some of the largest crime syndicates throughout Europe together for this project. Julian Latimer was useful in many ways to the enterprise, not least, in obtaining vital intelligence that would otherwise have not be available to them. Paul Hammer is able to move freely around the globe with his hotel chain. This is obviously the ideal cover to attend clandestine meetings with the syndicate partners. Charlie Hart – now there’s the enigma. We know that he has a global network of trading contacts and is still operating heavily in India. His organisation is so well-run and the people involved so loyal to him, that so far we have been unable to get anything on the man. Except, perhaps, that he owns an outstanding, yet dubious, copy of the most famous painting by Vermeer, which is hardly illegal, and it’s not a viable reason to arrest someone as wealthy and prominent as he is. The frustrating thing is that we’ve had all of these men under surveillance for many months and they’ve not made one single wrong move in all that time. The same goes for the locations, and until today we’ve not seen, sniffed or retrieved one ounce of any illegal substance. By the way, did you manage to bring any of the drugs you found in Lyme Regis away with you?”
Dillon had the distinct feeling that Morgan knew full-well that he did.
“Naturally. Otherwise there would be no evidence. But the majority of the stuff had already been moved to another location before I arrived down there.”
“How much did you get?”
“All that was left. It was in three plastic containers hidden inside one of the wooden crates. Each had around five kilos of cocaine in it. I left the crate there.”
“Do you think it was deliberately left behind?”
“Most definitely. They’d put it inside the caretaker’s van, which was then driven away from the house by Trevelyan’s men and hidden in woods about a mile away. The caretaker said that he heard one of them talking about hiding the van and then coming back for it later. But something he hadn’t thought about, was that they were almost certainly going to return later to kill both him and his wife, of that I’m positive. Once I’d pointed that out to him it was all it took for him to tell me where they were likely to have hidden the van. Anyway, after driving around for a bit I spotted it from the road. Thank God for amateurs, because in their haste they’d made a shabby attempt at concealing it.”
“I see. But why leave such a small amount behind? It seems a bit odd, doesn’t it?” Morgan asked.
“My view is that Trevelyan’s men were going to line their own pockets with it. And what better time to steal from your employer? Who’s going to miss one crate when there’re so many being shipped to God knows where?”
“So what have you done with it?”
“It’s safe. I’ve got a contact in the drugs squad, I’ll hand it over to him the moment I leave here.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’ll take it to them myself. Your job is done.”
“I don’t think it is. And anyway, drugs are not your concern.”
“Just what are you implying? And, damn it, Dillon. Aren’t you satisfied with your success?”
“No, not really. And as I say, Morgan, it’s not finished yet. I’m not one of your menials who you can push around, you know? I don’t work for you and you aren’t paying for my services, so you can piss off. You made your entrance long after I’d started on this assignment for whatever reasons. And you still haven’t given a sufficiently believable explanation as to why MI5 is so involved with what is evidently a narcotics investigation.”
Morgan’s voice took on an almost casual tone.
“Let me reiterate, Jake. We have been working alongside agencies from across Europe and the United States on this investigation. And, of course, their respective drug squads. This is far too big for any one agency or, come to that, any one country to handle. We are primarily concerned with the terrorist threat in the UK, of course. Our intelligence tells us that revenue is being generated from the sale of drugs, which will end up in some of the world’s hotspots to fund terrorist training boot camps.”
Dillon was taking a perverse sort of pleasure in seeing Morgan attempt to wriggle and squirm his way out of the situation he now found himself in.
“Does the drug squad know that they’re involved? I mean, if so many agencies and their highly qualified and experienced officers are tied up in this thing, why was it one person, an outsider, who was able to come up with the evidence where they had not? My instincts tell me that you’re talking a load of old bollocks, Morgan. I don’t believe a word of what you’ve just said and I reckon that you’re working alone on this whole affair. The only thing I’ve not figured out is why.”
Havelock was listening to this exchange, wishing he could break from the diplomatic protocol and niceties that he was bound to live his life by, like Dillon did so easily.
Morgan tried his best to sound reasonable and not at all peeved.
“Jake, call me what you like, but we only had your interests at heart once we found out where your investigation was taking you. We decided to let you run with it on your own because we all know that you get results. Quickly. If you still don’t believe me you can verify everything I’ve told you both this evening with Sir Lucius. He’s been behind you one hundred percent ever since you inadvertently discovered this very real threat to the security of this country. We all admire you, Jake. Hell, you might even get a bloody Knighthood for your roll in this. But believe me when I tell you that your part in this is now over. Mr. Havelock will confirm it.”
Dillon gazed across at Havelock as Morgan did. He shot him a quick look as a warning to not be intimidated into a hasty agreement.
Havelock was in a quandary. All his allegiance lay with Dillon who was right about who had engaged him. But even if he supported him now he knew that if Morgan represented the official line, he would have to comply. He tried for a compromise.
“You might have the authority you say, Brendon, but I cannot accept it without confirmation from a higher level. Preferably in writing from the Director General.”
Morgan shrugged. “Well you won’t get anything in writing and certainly not from the Director General. I’m surprised you even asked. I can phone someone now, if that will satisfy you.”
“I’m afraid that won’t do at all. After all, you could be calling anyone. And with respect, you’re no stranger to the art of deception, are you?”
“You surely don’t expect Dunstan to just take your word, do you, Brendon?”
Morgan turned to Dillon in fury. “I’ve already told you, Jake, that your input is no longer required. This is a matter for Mr. Havelock and me to sort out. Do I make myself clear?”
“I’m afraid not, can’t understand a bloody word you’re saying. It’s almost like you’re talking penguin or something.” Dillon was quietly laughing.
“And that nice guy façade of yours is slipping a little, Brendon, old
son. You were thanking me just a minute ago. But I knew that you’d have difficulty in keeping that one up. You’d better watch your lip and start treating Dunstan with a little more respect than you’ve been showing him. Or suffer the consequences.”
Dillon stood up and moved to the front window, leant against the wall and crossed his arms.
Morgan managed to regain control of his temper, well aware that Dillon was merely goading him. He turned back to Havelock. “Would a word from the Home Secretary satisfy you?”
“Of course. But you don’t intend to call him right now, do you?”
“First thing tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll have to take the drugs back to Thames House. Obviously I’ll give you a receipt.”
“Oh, the drugs are not here in the house, Brendon.”
Havelock had told the lie with ease and without feeling guilty. He did not like Morgan’s increasing arrogance or his assumption that he could get the better of him.
Morgan tried to stare Havelock out, but the senior civil servant had now taken his stand and was not going to be intimidated. Morgan lowered his head, gazed at his drink for an instant and was silent for a short while.
“You do realise that I could have you both arrested for obstructing the law?”
“Well, you should know a thing or two about that,” Dillon said from where he was standing by the window.
Every now and then he eased the curtain to one side and took a look outside.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I will leave here and drive straight to the drugs squad and hand the drugs over this evening. What could be fairer than that?”
Morgan said with tension in his voice, “What is your problem with allowing me to take the drugs? You know who I am and what my authority is. So what’s the big deal here?”
“The only problem is that the drugs are not here, Brendon. Nothing more and nothing less.”
Dillon was convinced by now that Morgan’s men had seen him lift the holdall from out of the boot of the Porsche and into the house, but Morgan couldn’t admit to it because he would then have to explain why Dunstan’s house was under surveillance.
Shroud of Concealment (Jake Dillon Adventure Thriller Series) Page 36
