Riley didn’t need to look at Weller — she could almost hear his teeth grinding in fury.
‘Another one?’ he yelped. ‘There’s a shipment coming in here and you didn’t think to bloody tell us?’ The words snapped across the room and Portius flinched as if he’d been struck across the face.
Riley felt almost sorry for him. If this didn’t create a new period of frosty relations between Washington and London, she wasn’t sure what would.
‘We had information,’ he muttered defensively. ‘But it was mostly rumour… nothing substantive.’ He looked at Riley for support and his voice grew harder in defiance. ‘You know how it is: it starts as a whisper, with bits here, pieces there. False stories, whispers… even misinformation, until in the end it gets so fragmented you don’t know what to believe.’
‘Is that what brought you over here?’ Riley asked. Then it hit her. ‘You knew what he was up to, didn’t you? You asked Immigration to let him go so you could follow him.’
‘And he bloody side-stepped you.’ Weller’s voice was loaded with accusation.
Portius looked like a man drowning. ‘It looks that way, yes.’ He tried not to catch Weller’s eye, and the senior policeman looked as if he wanted to turn the American into a stain on the carpet. ‘We suspected most of it but nobody would talk. What nobody could come up with was the name at this end.’
‘Sounds like Asner might have,’ said Weller sourly. ‘Doesn’t it?’
‘That was a mistake.’
Weller’s anger suddenly dissipated as quickly as it had arisen. He let out a deep sigh. ‘Okay. Now what?’
Portius cracked a knuckle and stared at the darkened window. ‘Henzigger’s a planner. He works out everything in advance, discounting risks, putting people in place, setting up escape routes and fallbacks. He uses people for information without them knowing it.’ He looked at Riley. ‘We think that’s why he approached you. He heard somehow that you and your friend, Palmer were close to Myburghe and figured you’d be a source of information.’ He paused. ‘There’s something else.’ He nodded at the phone. ‘I was just advised that they’ve brought the shipment date forward.’
‘When?’
‘We heard a whisper three days ago. By then it was too late to mount-’
Weller snarled like a terrier with a rat. ‘I don’t mean when did you hear, although God knows, I’m sure it wasn’t recent enough to be of any use. I meant when is the shipment due in, and where?’
Portius swallowed hard. ‘We think it was due today. My people are just checking the ETA.’ He looked like a small boy in front of a headmaster, and quickly leaned over to scribble on a piece of paper. He ripped off the sheet and handed it to Weller. ‘That’s the ship’s name.’
‘It’s tomorrow.’ Riley said, then looked at her watch. ‘No — it’s today.’
Weller’s head snapped round. ‘You what?’
She told him about her earlier meeting with Henzigger by the river. If Weller wanted her head on a plate, it was too bad. ‘I first suggested we meet up tomorrow, but he claimed he was tied up all day. Doing what? What could keep him more tied up than overseeing a shipment? It must have been somewhere close to London.’
Weller nodded. ‘Right. This has gone far enough.’ He turned to Portius. ‘How about you get Marching Boy back here to show us out. I’d hate to get shot by one of your goons for looking down the wrong corridor.’
Portius bridled at the implied criticism. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Me?’ Weller smiled and waved the piece of paper Portius had given him. ‘Now you’ve decided to cough up, I’ve got some shipping movements to look at.’
Portius looked like he’d rather have a full company of US marines come in and jump all over them in their boots. But he picked up the phone to summon an escort out of the building. Seconds later they were chasing the same marine guard back downstairs in double time.
‘You were rough on him,’ Riley said quietly, as they picked up their mobiles from the security desk.
Weller scowled. ‘Serves him right. If they’d shared their information years ago instead of playing silly buggers, we could have saved ourselves all this trouble.’ He gave a sly grin. ‘Did you see his face? Portius thought tonight was going to be all about me pleading mea bloody culpa over Myburghe. Now he’s had to admit one of their boys is a real stinker, he’s wriggling like a tart on a trapeze.’
Riley smiled at the imagery. ‘How about Myburghe — any sign of him yet?’
‘No. His car was found forty minutes ago under the Western Avenue flyover. It was empty.’
Riley mourned the fact that none of her time over the past few days was chargeable to the Home Office. They’d certainly had their money’s worth out of her. She almost felt admiration for Weller’s tactics. He’d played her all along just to stir the waters, and now he’d done the same with Portius. She was ready to bet that the mauling Portius had undergone at Weller’s hands was unprecedented. And now he was standing back to see what unfolded.
He handed her a card with his number on it. ‘Call me if you trip over him.’
As he disappeared into the night, Riley’s mobile rang.
It was Henzigger.
‘I’m real mad at you, Riley!’ he wailed, his voice a wild singsong and pitched high as if balanced on the edge of hysteria. The hum of a car engine filled the background, and she realised he was on the move. ‘I’ve got the feeling you weren’t being straight with me. Am I right? Are they closing in?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Riley said. ‘Where are you?’
‘C’mon, don’t kid a kidder. I know when something smells bad. I just got a call from a friend. Someone at the embassy wants my passport. Now why is that, I wonder? Still, never mind. I’ve got someone here who’ll make sure they play ball.’
Riley felt her throat tighten. She knew instantly what he was saying: he’d got Myburghe.
‘Now what do I do, Riley? Do I stick with the plan and hope I can get out in one piece? Or do I let it go and cut my losses? Whaddya say, huh?’
She couldn’t reply, unable to form the words.
When he spoke again, she felt a cold tremor running down her spine.
‘Or maybe I should let my guys hang Myburghe up in the same place they did his caveman butler!’
*********
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Riley rang Palmer and told him what had transpired, and that Henzigger was on his way to Colebrooke House.
‘I’ll take a look,’ he told her without hesitation. ‘He might not be there yet. Can you get hold of Mitcheson? We’ll need backup.’
Riley said she would and dialled Mitcheson’s number, knowing full well what Palmer meant by ‘backup’.
To her surprise, Mitcheson was on the Bayswater Road approaching Marble Arch. ‘I had a feeling you might need help,’ he said. ‘I’ll be five minutes.’
He was there within three, behind the wheel of a dark blue Land Cruiser. He was dressed in combat boots, slacks and a cotton windcheater.
‘My God,’ Riley said admiringly, as he turned the car towards west London. ‘What have you been doing — posing for a gay porn mag?’
He laughed. ‘I was actually getting ready for a night-time surveillance job. Fortunately, it’ll keep. What’s going on — and why were you in the Magic Kingdom?’ He was referring to the US Embassy.
She told him about the meeting with Weller and Portius, and how Henzigger had been running drugs with Myburghe’s help. Now, with Portius having mounted a watch on his activities, Henzigger was out of options and ready to kill Myburghe unless he got a route out of the country.
Colebrooke House was the only place Henzigger would go. She could feel it. Myburghe’s car being found along the Western Avenue was a definite pointer. Other than the M4, it was the main route out of London towards Gloucestershire. Henzigger must have followed Myburghe and hijacked him once he realised his plans were falling apart, and now he was planning the final curtain.
Once clear of the London traffic, the motorway was reasonably clear. The few hesitant motorists they encountered took one look at the charging Land Cruiser in their rear-view mirrors and moved out of the way.
Mitcheson jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate a steel box in the back. ‘I stopped off and brought some gear,’ he said. ‘I thought we might need it.’
Riley felt a sudden tug of concern. The ‘gear’ he was referring to most likely had triggers and made loud noises, and if they were stopped by police, would be enough to put them both away for a very long time. But she knew Mitcheson wasn’t overly bothered by such niceties. Like Frank Palmer, he took the pragmatist’s view that you used the right tools for the job. Unlike Palmer, though, she wasn’t sure how much control he would exercise in an all-round fight. She felt guilty for even thinking it, but hoped he could control it enough to keep casualties down to single figures.
‘Is it traceable?’
He gave a half smile in the glow from the dashboard display. ‘Not to me, it isn’t.’
While the road unwound beneath them, Riley filled in the gaps about Henzigger and Myburghe, and how the ambassador had been sucked into the world of drugs and ready money.
‘Only he can tell us,’ said Riley. ‘But I think he ran up huge gambling debts and realised there was only one way to settle them. Who would suspect a British Ambassador of helping clear the way for the occasional drugs shipment? It must have taken a while to reel him in, but it was worth it.’
‘Unless he was coerced,’ Mitcheson suggested. ‘It wouldn’t have taken much for his family to be threatened.’
Riley looked at him in the glow of passing lights. ‘You sound as if you’re making excuses for him.’
‘I know how they work.’ He let a few seconds go by, then asked, ‘What brought this to a head, anyway?’
‘I think Christian’s death tipped the balance. Myburghe had nothing left for them to hold over him. The girls were out of the way and his wife was no longer a factor.’ She remembered Henzigger’s word. ‘The leverage was gone.’
Mitcheson nodded. If the former diplomat had been operating under extreme pressure to do what he’d done, it made his actions at least understandable. Now, with that pressure gone, he was no longer the help Henzigger and his backers needed.
‘The DEA think Henzigger and his backers have been planning this for years,’ Riley continued. ‘He needed someone to make it happen at this end. Someone to help get the shipment through. He met Sir Kenneth and probably learned of his gambling debts. It was a weakness he could trade on.’
‘So the business with Christian was a bluff?’
‘To begin with. When he baulked, they picked Christian up and killed him. Whether intentionally or not, we’ll never know.’
Riley rested her head against the cool of the window. Somehow, two strands of Myburghe’s life and career had come together in an elaborate hoax; the letters and the fake bomb from Jacob Worth, a punishment for what the former Intelligence Officer had seen as the ambassador’s betrayal in a time of crisis; and the finger and ring from Henzigger and the people behind him, probably preceded by threats of exposure about his gambling debts to keep Sir Kenneth in line.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said finally, aware that she, too, was sounding as if she might be excusing Myburghe’s actions, ‘that the business with his wife and son was as clearcut as everyone thinks.’
Mitcheson turned to look at her. He was negotiating a sharp, plunging bend at the time. They made it with a whisper of leaves and a slight squeal of tyres.
‘What do you mean?’
She explained how rehearsed Lady Myburghe’s explanations had sounded about her husband’s gambling, and how readily she had disclosed such intimate details. ‘I suspect he deliberately cut himself off from his wife because he knew the kind of people he was dealing with. There wasn’t much he could do about his son without revealing what he was up to. His daughters were protected by being in London, but Christian wanted to be out in the big, wide world. In the end, Myburghe persuaded him to go abroad, probably convinced he’d be safer out there where nobody could find him. But his wife was a vulnerability he couldn’t control, so he did the only thing he could, which was to distance himself from her. It put her out of the picture.’
‘So she was party to it?’
‘She had to be, after all those years. She’d been through worse.’
‘He still did it,’ Mitcheson growled, his meaning clear. Whatever his reasons, Sir Kenneth had helped facilitate the importing of drugs to the UK, abandoning his principles, his honour and his loyalty, maybe even his soul. For money.
Riley couldn’t disagree. There was no escaping that what must have started out as an occasional harmless flutter all those years ago had eventually turned into something far worse than he could ever have imagined. The only way out was total disgrace — or coming to an arrangement. ‘Save some of the blame for Henzigger. He helped engineer this.’
‘How do you know?’
She told him about the failed drugs bust and Henzigger’s suspected part in it. ‘He and his suppliers lost everything. God knows what it cost them, but it was enough for them to put in extra insurance this time to make sure the next one didn’t go wrong.’
‘The Colombian grooms.’ Mitcheson nodded in agreement. ‘They killed Hilary.’
‘He must have known all about the schemes. He was the bodyguard your friend saw with Myburghe in Colombia. Sir Kenneth’s attempt at watching his own back.’
She shivered, recalling the terrible thing she had seen in the stable block. No man deserved to die like that. Thoughts of Colebrooke House made her wonder where Palmer was right now.
‘Can you make this thing go any faster?’
**********
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Frank Palmer drove his Saab through the village and past the entrance to Colebrooke House. A line of police tape was stretched across the gateway, with a metal sign warning visitors to stay out.
He turned the car round and drove back. Across the road from the entrance, he spotted a narrow, disused track overhung with the branches of a horse chestnut tree. He stopped and reversed until the car was hidden beneath the foliage, then turned off the engine and climbed out, allowing his eyes to become accustomed to the dark.
He slipped across the road and over a section of dry-stone wall, and padded through the trees parallel with the long driveway. There was no sound save for the wind in the branches, the flapping of a pigeon somewhere overhead and the bark of a fox in the distance.
He reached the edge of the tree line and studied the house. The building was in darkness, but the ground security lights along the front threw up an unearthly glow across the walls and windows. In contrast to the glamour and glitz of the wedding party, the effect was cold and unwelcoming, as if all life had been sucked out, leaving a skeleton in its place.
He waited five minutes, totally immobile. Satisfied he was unobserved, he slid along the tree line to his left and crossed the drive, towards the rear of the house. If it turned out he was wrong, and Henzigger and his men were already here, their vehicles would be in evidence somewhere.
No cars.
He jogged back to the Saab, hugging the trees. He might need a fast exit from here, and his car was too far for a quick getaway. He climbed in and drove out of the track and straight for the main gate.
He slowed before the tape, steering past the police sign and allowing the plastic strip to slide up the bonnet and over the roof. It was a tight stretch, but he made it without snapping it. He doubted if the local police had the resources to send an officer to check the place around the clock, but leaving signs of a forced entry would certainly be enough to raise the alarm if one happened along. And Henzigger could read those signs just like anyone else.
He followed the drive to the rear of the house, pulling in alongside an old coach-house that was now used as a maintenance workshop. He edged the car back out of sight and went to c
heck the house and surrounding gardens.
Ten minutes later, he’d covered the grounds and stables, and was about to try the house when he heard the hum of vehicles approaching. Headlights flared across the front of the house as two cars barrelled up the drive, spitting gravel. They skidded to a stop near the front door and a tall figure carrying a shiny briefcase jumped out of the first one, issuing orders.
Palmer guessed it was Henzigger.
The American was joined by three armed men. One was carrying a large canvas bag, grunting with effort. The other two men reached into the second car and dragged a figure from the rear seat, bundling him roughly towards the side of the house under Henzigger’s directions. The man was having trouble walking and had to be supported by the others.
In the glow of the security lights, Palmer recognised Sir Kenneth Myburghe.
He followed their progress to the rear of the house, where they pushed Sir Kenneth down against the wall. He sat uncomplaining, his head lolling back against the brickwork, and Palmer guessed they had sedated him.
Henzigger issued orders in Spanish, and two of the men ran across the gardens carrying the canvas bag between them. None of the motion-detector lights came on, and Palmer realised they must have been disabled. The men disappeared from sight, to reappear moments later in the distance, now several yards apart. As they ran, they each set something down on the ground, following parallel lines running from the house to the woods in the distance. As each object was left, it was glowing brightly.
They were laying out a landing strip.
Palmer was surprised. It looked far too short a space for a plane to land and take off. If the pilot misjudged his approach and speed even by a fraction, he’d hit the house or the trees. Unless, he reflected, it wasn’t the first time they’d done it. It explained why the security lights at the back had been disabled: the glare would have interfered too much with the pilot’s night vision.
The two men returned, the canvas bag discarded, their breathing laboured. Behind them, the twin line of lights curved away down the slope across the open ground.
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