Gray Redemption

by Alan McDermott

  Farrar was about to suggest he do just that when Gray forced him into the chair with the barrel of the pistol.

  “And if I have to find another way, there’ll be no need to keep you alive.”

  Farrar held his tongue. The last thing he wanted to do was push Gray too far and overplay his hand.

  “Get on with it,” he said, straightening his already immaculate tie.

  Gray went to the camera and hit the record button and then moved next to Farrar, careful to keep the gun out of view.

  “My name is Tom Gray.” He paused, more to compose himself than for dramatic effect. “Some of you may not believe me, but I’m sure subsequent audio comparisons with my recordings last year will convince you.”

  Farrar winced. He hadn’t considered forensic confirmation, so any attempt to dismiss Gray as a delusional imposter was not going to fly.

  “I have a remarkable tale to tell,” Gray continued, “and this man, James Farrar from Her Majesty’s government, is going to confirm everything I say.”

  Gray moved back behind the camera and zoomed in on his subject. Once he was happy with the way Farrar was framed, he placed the pistol on the camera case and pulled a set of prompt cards from his inside pocket.

  “On the thirtieth of April last year, it was announced to the world that I had died from the injuries I’d suffered ten days earlier. In actual fact, I was secreted out of Britain on a military transport plane and taken to Subic Bay in the Philippines. The order to do this came from the Home Secretary.”

  Gray looked at Farrar. “Is that what happened?”

  “That is correct.”

  Gray moved on to the next card, but before he could read it, Farrar jumped in. “I also want to say that I am agreeing to everything because this man is armed and I fear for my life.”

  “Duly noted,” Gray said. “Last month, I was taken hostage by members of Abu Sayyaf and you sent Len Smart and Simon Baines to rescue me. You gave them unserviceable ammunition in order to increase the chances of them being captured and killed. Is that correct?”

  Farrar again acknowledged the statement as being true.

  “When we managed to escape from the Philippines, you found out which route we were taking and you hired a hit man to intercept and kill us in Durban.”

  He looked at Farrar, who nodded. “Correct.”

  “The same hit man who killed British national Timmy Hughes in Singapore two weeks ago.”

  “Yes.”

  “You also sent a hit team to kill Carl Levine, his wife Sandra and their daughter Alana, as well as Jeff Campbell and his wife Anne. They were staying in a caravan in Dorset, which was recently destroyed in an explosion.”

  “That’s right.”

  Farrar noticed that Gray was becoming complacent, strolling around the room as he made his accusations, and he’d taken his eye off the pistol near the camera. Farrar didn’t yet have an opportunity to grab the weapon as Gray was still too close, but with a handful of cards still to be read, there was still time. He calculated it to be three steps, so even a two second start should be enough.

  He kept his focus on Gray, deliberately keeping his gaze off the gun, just in case he telegraphed his intentions.

  The next question, when it came, caught him off guard.

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “You’re the one who invented this nonsense. I can hardly be expected to explain what goes on inside your mind.”

  “Then how about I give you the theory presented to me by Jeff Campbell?”

  “By all means, go ahead.”

  Gray read from the card, explaining how the government had made a deal with the six surviving men in return for their silence, and how Farrar had been instrumental in trying to eliminate everyone involved.

  “Does that sound right?”

  Farrar waved a dismissive hand. “Whatever.”

  Gray strode purposefully towards him, his face ending up inches from Farrar’s, the venom in his eyes palpable.

  “Don’t give me whatever!” He shouted. “Is that what happened?”

  “Yes! Yes! Exactly like that!”

  Gray straightened up. He turned his back and walked away, studying the next card in the pile. Farrar watched him take two, three, four steps, still concentrating on the next question, and he saw his chance.

  Gray heard the sound of the chair leg scraping against the floor as Farrar made a bolt for it, and by the time he looked at where his captive had been, he’d already reached the gun. Gray started to charge towards him but the pistol came up, pointing at his face. He stopped dead.

  “The safety’s still on,” he said, hoping to get Farrar to take his eye off the target.

  “Nice try,” Farrar said. “I know my way around a Browning and that’s the first thing I checked. I also know there’s a round in the chamber.”

  Farrar ejected the magazine, the gun never wavering. The clip was full and he rammed it back into the grip. “Turn the camera off.”

  Gray moved slowly over to the recorder and hit the stop button.

  “Give me the recording.”

  Gray ejected the USB flash drive and threw it on the floor near Farrar’s feet. “Now what?” He asked. “Are you going to shoot an unarmed man, a delusional imposter?”

  “Enough games, Tom.”

  “Oh, so now you acknowledge that I’m Tom Gray. Too much of a coward to admit it to the world?”

  “I said enough!” Farrar shouted. He tried to gather himself, concentrating on turning this in his favour. “Tell me where the others are.”

  “That’s not going to happen and you know it,” Tom spat. “If I don’t meet up with them in thirty minutes, they’ll disappear.”

  “Tom, I’ll give you one last chance. Tell me where they are and I’ll make it a quick death, otherwise…”

  Gray laughed. “You know, when you try to sound intimidating it just comes off as desperate.” He sat down on the chair. “And just what would you do if you found them? Apologise for the inconvenience you’ve caused over the last year or so? You’ve sent teams to kill them and they failed. What makes you think you can get it right this time?”

  “I’ll do it myself if I have to,” Farrar said.

  Gray snorted. “You haven’t got it in you. You’re happy to sit behind a desk and let others do the dirty work, but you’re nowhere near man enough to pull the trigger yourself.”

  Farrar took two steps towards him, the gun aiming at the centre of Gray’s face. “I’ll give you one last chance, Tom. Where are they?”

  Gray ignored the question. “What are you going to do when this gets out, James? You can’t bury the truth forever, you know that.”

  “Very apt choice of phrase,” Farrar said, “because that’s exactly what I intend to do, starting with you.”

  Gray just smiled back. “It’s over, James.” He got to his feet and started walking towards Farrar. He had three paces to cover, but only managed one before the trigger sent the firing pin smashing down on the percussion cap of the next round in the chamber.

  Click!

  Farrar looked stunned. He ejected the round, thinking he had a blockage. He tried the next round, and the next, both with the same result.

  Gray grabbed the gun from him and pushed him to the floor. He removed the clip, then extracted the top bullet and pulled a penknife from his pocket. He eased the bullet from the cartridge and tipped the contents onto Farrar’s chest.

  “Sand,” he said, dropping the empty brass casing into Farrar’s hand. “Seems to be happening quite a lot these days.”

  Farrar scrambled to his feet, his fists clenched, but Gray ignored him and walked over to a pile of boxes covered by an old tarpaulin. He dragged it aside to reveal a television set, which he switched on.

  Farrar looked at a picture of himself, streaming live to the nation via the BBC news channel. He raised a hand, and a moment later the figure on the screen did the same.

  Gr
ay waved to the four corners of the room. “Fibre optic cameras and state-of-the-art microphones, courtesy, ironically, of Her Majesty’s Government.”

  He clicked his throat mic. “All yours, Andrew.”

  * * *

  Harvey entered the room accompanied by two armed police officers. “Don’t forget to read him his rights,” Harvey told them as they forced Farrar to the floor and cuffed him.

  Farrar was dragged to his feet and marched out of the building. Harvey and Gray followed them, and Tom watched his nemesis take a seat in the back of the unmarked car.

  “We got some great footage,” Gerald Small said, handing Gray a tablet PC. “You ought to be on the stage.”

  “Can I get a copy?” Gray asked, handing over the comms kit.

  “Already done,” Small smiled. “I’ll get Andrew to drop it off at the safe house later today.”

  Gray thanked him for his help and joined Harvey in the Ford saloon. They drove away from the city, heading for the quiet residential area which housed the four-storey building Gray and the others would call home for the next few days.

  There was no telling what immediate effect his transmission would have, though Gray knew the Prime Minister’s spin doctor would no doubt be working overtime to play it down. The next step was to get a live interview on the BBC and give his side of the story before the political machine had a chance to bury the story as a hoax. Paul Gross hadn’t been convinced that he’d be allowed to broadcast a live interview, but Gray would simply take it to the other news outlets if the BBC hierarchy refused to play ball, and he’d already created a home video that would hit the top dozen social media sites if no broadcaster was willing to run the story.

  Harvey’s phone chirped and he put it on speakerphone. “Hi, Hamad.”

  “Andrew, we may have found Mansour.”

  “Abdul Mansour?” Gray asked, perking up on hearing the name, and Harvey suddenly remembered he wasn’t alone in the car. He went to take the phone from its dashboard mounting but Gray stopped him. After all he’d been through at Mansour’s hand, he thought he was entitled to hear this.

  Harvey saw the look of determination, and decided not to make a fight of it. “What did you find, Hamad?”

  “Remember the lady we followed through the airport this morning? The one we thought was walking strange?”

  “Yeah, but we discounted her. She showed her face to the border guard.”

  “I know, but there were no other hits, so I went back to her. If the guard hadn’t seen her face I would have been certain we had our man, so I checked him out. Turns out he had over thirty grand of gambling debts until three years ago, then they were suddenly paid off. He’s been debt free since.”

  “That’s not unusual,” Harvey said. “Maybe he just stopped gambling.”

  “That was my thought, but I checked with the casino he used to frequent. He still goes there six days a week, and spends an average of two hundred pounds a night.”

  “Doesn’t sound like something you could do on a border guard’s salary.”

  “I know,” Hamad said. “Someone’s been giving him a shitload of cash each month, and you’d expect him to be giving something in return.”

  “Such as turning a blind eye now and again,” Harvey agreed. “So assuming it is Mansour, where did he go once he left the airport?”

  “We tracked his car through the Highway Agency’s network of cameras to a place in Stratford.”

  Harvey pulled over and asked for the address, which he typed into the satnav. “I can be there in twenty minutes,” he said, and pulled out into the traffic.

  “SO15 won’t be there for another thirty,” Farsi said. “They’re in the middle of an operation at the moment.”

  “Okay, I’ll hang back when I get there.”

  Harvey steered the car through side streets, trying to avoid the main arteries of the city that would be clogged at this time of day.

  “Abdul Mansour is here, in the UK?” Gray asked, incredulous, and Harvey nodded. He explained that they’d received intelligence and were working it up, though he didn’t go as far as telling Gray about the specific threat. “We think he came in dressed as a Muslim woman and was helped through customs by an officer on the take.”

  They arrived at the target street seventeen minutes later. Harvey parked close to the junction and told Gray to wait in the car.

  “I’m going to do a walk past,” he said, taking the phone from its holder. “I want you to stay here, Tom.”

  Gray nodded. It wasn’t his operation, and the last thing he wanted to do was antagonise Harvey after all he’d done for him.

  * * *

  “Abdul, we may have a problem!”

  Mansour had just finished taking a shower and he went to the living room to see what Mohammad, the house owner, was concerned about. He found the man looking through a small gap in the net curtains.

  “What is it?”

  “A stranger in the street,” Mohammad said, and Mansour watched the man walking slowly past the house. He was on the other side of the street and didn’t seem to have any particular destination, simply ambling from one end of the street to the other.

  “He could be a salesman, or an estate agent. How can you be sure he’s a threat?”

  “Because he parked his car down there,” Mohammad said, pointing to a Ford, “and there’s someone in the passenger seat.”

  Mansour could see the occupant of the car, but couldn’t make out the facial features. He asked Mohammad for a camera and he used it to zoom in on the car.

  His heart almost stopped. He instantly recognised the man from his time in the southern Philippines and a strange, alien feeling washed over him.

  It took him some time to realise that it was fear.

  Mansour was torn between confronting the man and running, and prudence dictated he choose the latter. He took a photo of the man and handed the camera to Mohammad.

  “You are right,” he said. “I must leave, but I want you to find out who this man is.”

  “What of the operation?”

  The cameraman was due to arrive in twenty minutes to collect the virus, but Mansour knew it was too late. Somehow they had found him, which meant it was time to disappear again.

  “It is postponed.” He ran up the stairs and threw on the burqa, then collected the inhaler and spare canister and put them in his pocket. He left the passport as it had probably been compromised, but he grabbed the cash on the dressing table.

  When he descended the stairs, Mohammad was waiting in the hallway.

  “I haven’t seen anyone else arrive,” he said, and gave Mansour a slip of paper. “You can stay here for a few days until the heat dies down.”

  Mansour committed the address to memory and handed it back. “Can you distract them while I go out the back?”

  “Of course. Go, and may Allah watch over you.”

  * * *

  Gray watched the man appear from the front of the house and cross the road on a collision course with Harvey.

  “Hey! I know you! You stole my bike!”

  Harvey turned to see an angry looking man bearing down on him. The last thing he needed was a scene, so he tried to walk away, but the stranger grabbed his collar and swung a punch. Harvey easily avoided it, but the man kept coming and he tried talking his way out of it.

  Gray was watching the drama unfold when a flash of movement caught his eye. In a gap between two semi-detached houses he saw a figure in black hurdle a fence and disappear into the next garden, and he knew instantly that Harvey’s attacker was a distraction.

  He jumped into the driver’s seat but the ignition was empty: Harvey must have taken them with him. He debated helping, but he knew that with every passing second, Mansour’s chance of escape increased exponentially.

  Harvey seemed to be holding his own, and with the armed police due in the next few minutes, he decided to take up the chase.

  By the time he climbed out of the car and reached the end of the road, Mans
our had cleared the garden and was running towards an alleyway, his burqa flapping around his legs. Gray followed a hundred yards behind and hit the alley just as his target exited the other end, turning to the right. He’d closed by ten yards, but Mansour still had a healthy lead.

  When Gray got to the end of the alley he saw the black clothes disappear around another corner and sprinted to catch up, the exertion already beginning to tell after weeks with no proper exercise. When he reached the main road he saw a sea of pedestrians parting as Mansour barged his way through. An elderly lady was knocked to the ground but Mansour didn’t give her a second thought as he dashed across the road, narrowly avoiding a van which just managed to slam its brakes on. The driver of the car behind wasn’t as quick to react, and she ploughed into the back of the van, but Gray didn’t break stride as he ran between the two damaged vehicles.

  He was beginning to close on his target, and Mansour could sense it. He turned and saw the pursuer less than fifty yards behind him, and his first thought was to find a weapon. He saw a hardware store and dived inside, scattering customers as he search for the aisle containing the knives. Mansour grabbed two from the shelf and turned to the front of the store, only to find his way blocked by an employee. He ripped off his headpiece and gave the teenager a look which offered two options: get out of the way; or die.

  The young man got the message. He stood aside and Mansour ran out of the shop.

  Where he found the mystery man waiting for him.

  They stared at each other for what seemed a lifetime, oblivious to the crowd gathering around them — albeit at a respectful distance.

  “Drop the knives,” Gray said, his voice tinged with anger.

  Mansour ignored the command, instead trying desperately to think where he’d seen the man before.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  Mansour may not have recognised him, but a few of the shoppers had seen the BBC news transmission and knew exactly who they were looking at. Whispers of “Tom Gray” began to grow, and when they reached the terrorist’s ears he wondered if it could possibly be true.