Plausible Deniability: The explosive Lex Harper novella

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Thanks,’ Harper said with a smile. ‘Fair exchange is no robbery.’

  The driver picked up a five gallon jerry-can that was full of used engine oil and poured it all over the stacked machinery in the truck. He winked at Harper. ‘Any customs man who wants to make a full inspection is going to need a new uniform afterwards, so I’m guessing they’ll just look at the bill of lading and not go any further.’

  They shut the doors again, locked them and fixed a carefully forged customs seal to them. The driver grinned. ‘See? Already inspected and sealed anyway.’ The two men got back in the cab, and roared off again, back the way they had come.

  While Harper and Barry Big carried the new parts back down to the quarry floor and carefully reassembled the Tac Nuke, Barry Whisper and Annie Laurie drove all but one of the Serb and Iranian 4x4s right to the edge of the sheer cliff on the other side of the quarry, then climbed out of them, released the handbrakes and pushed them in turn over the edge. They smashed down onto the quarry floor, disintegrating into heaps of twisted metal.

  Barry Whisper and Annie Laurie joined Harper and Barry Big on the quarry floor, still with a few minutes to spare before the Al Shaheen’s heli was due to return. When he’d finished with the Tac Nuke, Harper retrieved the pack of money that Laiya had given the Serbs and took a bundle of 500 euro notes from it. He riffled through them and then handed most of them to Barry Big. ‘That’s about half a million euros,’ he said. ‘So it should be enough for any eventuality.’

  He pulled the wrappers from a couple of the other wads of money and threw them up into the air. They drifted down on the breeze, landing in the dust and among the surrounding scrub and bushes. He nodded to himself and then glanced at his watch. ‘Okay, you guys need to make yourselves scarce. The heli is due back in ten minutes. And as ever, thanks for everything. Your fees will all be in the usual accounts by the time you get home. Oh and I need to fire a couple more rounds, so don’t panic when you hear the shooting!’

  As they made their way back up the slope, Harper laid the money-pack on the ground, picked up one of the Serb weapons and fired two rounds at close-range into it. Shreds of paper flew like thistle down as the rounds punched a fist-sized hole through the money. He examined the pack then muttered ‘One more for luck’ and put another round into it, causing a fresh blizzard of shredded paper.

  As the echoes faded, he saw Barry Big and the others outlined on the rim of the quarry for a moment as they all raised a hand in farewell and a few seconds later he heard the sound of an engine as they drove off in the last Serb 4x4.

  Harper spent the few remaining minutes while he was waiting for the returning heli in gathering up the Serbs’ Makarovs and Skorpions. If the Serbian mafia sent men to search for their missing comrades, there was no sense in leaving the weapons for them to find. The dead Serbs and Iranians were left for the vultures.

  He sat down on a rock to wait and within a couple of minutes he heard the sound of rotors and saw the heli sweep into view. It landed in the familiar cloud of dust, though this time it also whipped up the banknotes that Harper had scattered into a snowstorm. The loadmaster jumped down and helped him to load the Tac Nuke, the money pack and the weapons into the cargo bay, and then the heli was airborne again, and soon exited Serbian airspace for the final time. When the heli had crossed the coast of Bosnia-Herzegovina and passed out of sight of land on its way back to the Al Shaheen, Harper walked to the loading bay door and dropped the Makarovs and Skorpions into the sea.

  The captain of the Al Shaheen, a Saudi general and two military scientists were waiting on the deck as the helicopter went into a hover and then landed on the heli-pad. The captain at once took charge of the money pack, though he winced at the bullet-riddled state of it. When the loadmaster had overseen the unloading of the Tac Nuke, the general took charge of it and, ordering two sailors to carry it below decks, he hurried after them with the scientists at his heels.

  Harper headed straight for the sick bay to check on Saif and Laiya. Saif was still in the operating theatre, with the surgeons working to repair his collapsed lung and the trauma and blood loss caused by the round that had hit his chest, but the prognosis for a full recovery was apparently good.

  Laiya had a row of steri-strips across the gash on her face and the beginnings of a purpling bruise on her jaw but she brushed aside Harper’s expressions of sympathy. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘The surgeon says it’ll leave only the very faintest of scars when it’s healed. So the only lasting damage will be to my pride because I let that Serb bastard side-swipe me.’

  ‘True,’ Harper said, ‘but on a positive note, you did shoot him in the throat a second or two later.’

  She laughed. ‘Be sure to mention that in the debrief, just in case any of my men missed it.’

  Towards the end of the briefing, he became aware of the Al Shaheen’s captain pacing up and down outside the briefing room, and as soon as it ended, he hurried into the room and held a muttered consultation with Laiya. Harper noticed that the captain glanced across at him several times as he was talking to Laiya and having expected that this would happen, he strolled over to them. ‘Problems?’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Laiya said, turning to face him. ‘The captain tells me that it appears that some of the money is missing. Though it is difficult to be certain, since the money pack had been hit by several rounds.’

  Harper kept his face expressionless. ‘Really? How much?’

  ‘Perhaps as much as half a million euros might be missing.’

  Harper gave a low whistle. ‘That is a lot. I didn’t have the money under observation all the time while I was waiting for the heli to come back, because I was gathering up the Serbs’ and Iranians weapons for disposal and pushing their vehicles over the edge of the quarry.’ He shrugged. ‘So there was certainly time enough when it was out of my sight for someone to sneak in and steal the money, but that seems pretty unlikely. I would stake my life on the honesty of my team and the Serbs and Iranians were all dead and in no position to help themselves to it. So unless some goat-herder or other random stranger managed to get in and out of the quarry without being seen - and that is vanishingly unlikely - I’d suggest it was either destroyed by gunfire or spilled out of the pack when the rounds hit it. There was certainly a snowstorm of banknotes when the heli landed - just ask the pilot - and we didn’t stop to pick them up.’

  The captain gave him a suspicious look. ‘It would be quite a snowstorm, wouldn’t it?’

  Harper stared him down, keeping his expression neutral and his voice calm but icy cold. ‘If you’re suggesting that I’ve stolen the money, you’re welcome to search me and my quarters.’

  ‘No one is suggesting that,’ Laiya said hurriedly with a warning look to the captain. ‘It’s just curious, that’s all.’

  Harper spread his hands wide. ‘Well, you never told me how much your government was going to pay, but from the weight of that pack, I’d say it must have been close to ten million euros. So look at it this way: this morning your government was expecting to be ten million euros poorer by now, in exchange for that Tac Nuke. Well now, they’ve got nine and a half million euros back again and they’ve got the Tac Nuke as well. Sounds like a pretty good result to me.’

  The captain compressed his lips into a thin line but said nothing and after studying Harper’s expression for a few more moments, Laiya shrugged. ‘Perhaps you’re right, Lex, though there is one more thing. The weapons scientists can’t be sure until they’ve carried out a full evaluation of the device, but they have raised a concern that it may have been tampered with and may not be viable.’

  ‘Well, if so, that’s not something you can lay at my door,’ Harper said. ‘Unless you’re suggesting I had a nuclear weapons tool kit in my back pocket. If that is the case, then the Serbs must have pulled a fast one on us.’

  ‘And yet you vouched for the fact that it was genuine,’ Laiya said.

  ‘No, I vouched for the fact that it looked genuine, jus
t like the ones I’d seen when serving with the Paras. But I’m not a weapons scientist and since your own weapons scientists aren’t sure if it’s genuine or not without further tests, then any tampering, if it did happen, must have been too subtle for a common ex-soldier like me to be expected to spot.’

  He nodded curtly and went up on deck. Laiya sought him out a little later. ‘I’m sorry that we had to confront you about the money, Lex, but you must admit it did look suspicious. Personally I don’t care what happened to the money. As you said, we got a very good result at a much lower price than we were expecting to pay, so as far as I’m concerned, it’s all forgotten. Okay?’

  He nodded. ‘Okay.’

  When Harper next checked the email drafts folder he used for communications with Charlotte Button, there was a single message from her, short and sweet. ‘Parts arrived in the UK. Job well done. Your cheque is in the post.’

  CHAPTER 11

  The heli had transferred the Tac Nuke to a Saudi military base for further evaluation, and on its return flight, it brought a passenger, Anwar, for a consultation with Harper and Laiya. ‘Despite one or two small problems,’ Anwar said, with a sidelong glance at Harper, ‘we are pleased with the results of the first two operations and now, as promised, it is time to turn our attention to the matter of Colonel Channarong. We have a common target and as I said before, I see no reason why we should not pool our resources to our mutual advantage. We can provide any assistance you require with a cover story, surveillance, background intelligence, recces, and armed support, and anything else you need to lure this individual to a place from where we can abduct him without anyone being any the wiser.’

  Harper raised an eyebrow. ‘You want him alive, then?’

  ‘Indeed. Powerful individuals in the Kingdom wish to confront this person with his crimes and personally mete out the appropriate punishment, but before that can be allowed to happen we need to be certain that there will be no further problems from that quarter. So first he will need to be persuaded to tell us with whom, if anyone, he has shared his knowledge of the matter at hand, and as you know, eliciting such information can sometimes be a lengthy process.’ He gave a chilling smile. ‘Even with all the specialised facilities we have at our disposal.’

  Harper kept his expression neutral. The formalities of Saudi etiquette seemed to require even a one word answer to last for several sentences. ‘Understood,’ he said.

  ‘There is no possibility of abducting Channarong from Thailand without the risk of a calamitous diplomatic incident if it goes wrong,’ said Anwar. ‘Nor is he stupid enough to agree to fly to Saudi Arabia, so we need to lure him to a third country, where he will feel secure, but where we can target him and secure him with minimal risk of any PR blow-back. Now, recently he has been demanding regular payments from a wealthy Saudi individual, to protect his sons from a criminal investigation. The amounts paid have been relatively modest - $100,000 each time, but it is most definitely extortion.’

  Harper had to hide a smile at the Saudi definition of ‘relatively modest’.

  ‘However, despite repeated assurances that there would be no more demands,’ Anwar said, ‘he keeps asking for more. Therefore, I suggest that we make an approach through the channels he has already been using, saying that our principal is tiring of this and wants to put this irritation behind him once and for all. We will therefore propose to him that we make a single, substantial payment in cash, in dollars, in return for all the surveillance footage, phone tap intercepts etc, that he holds, making an end of the matter. Would you say that one or two million dollars would be enough to achieve our purpose?’

  ‘It would for me,’ Harper said, ‘but since we’re not intending to hand over any money anyway, why not make it five million dollars? That way his greed is more likely to overwhelm any reservations he might have. However, if it’s going to work, we’ll need a plausible location for the hand-over. How about we use the Al Shaheen?’

  ‘Very well,’ Anwar said. ‘I will overview the conduct of the op from the operations centre on the Al Shaheen where I shall station myself. We will also stream the operation live to our Defence Headquarters in Riyadh so our superiors can see what their dollars are buying.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Harper. ‘Now there’s a little port called Portofino on Italy’s Ligurian coast. It’s a real haven of the super rich - like Monaco but a lot less trashy - and there are always a lot of super-yachts, millionaires and billionaires cruising around there in summer. If you can have the Al Shaheen sail there, we can not only use it to support the legend we’re creating, it will also act as the base for the op. As usual, we will need the ship to arrive with all flags flying and lit up from stem to stern because we must create the impression that the Saudi playboys are coming to Portofino to party. We’re also going to need at least a dozen of our team of special ops guys in addition to the crew the ship carries, and we’ll require some other logistical support as well: comms kit, weaponry and other supplies, and several vehicles, including a goods van and a couple of heavy lorries.’

  They spent several more hours developing and refining the plan, but Harper was confident that it would work, always provided that the Thai colonel took the bait. Within two days he had the answer. Channarong had agreed to fly to Italy, hand over the incriminating documents and film footage he held, and in return collect an enormous cash payment in full and final settlement.

  ‘He won’t agree to board the yacht,’ Anwar told Harper. ‘He said he would only meet us in a public place, like a restaurant, where we can do the handover in full view of his security team.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Harper said, ‘I never expected he’d agree to go on board, but as long as he’s in country and heading for Portofino, we’ve got him.’

  CHAPTER 12

  Once more Harper had called on Hansfree’s electronics wizardry and he had little difficulty in hacking into the Thai Airlines’ booking system and discovering Channarong’s flight plans. ‘He’s travelling with another Thai, presumably his bodyguard, and they’re booked - first class naturally - on a flight into Rome, connecting with a commuter flight to Pisa,’ said Hansfree.

  ‘Great work, Hansfree,’ Harper said.

  ‘Wait, there’s more,’ Hansfree said. ‘They are then picking up a top of the range Merc.’

  ‘Chauffeur driven or self driven?’

  ‘Self-driven.’

  ‘Excellent, that makes things easier.’

  Harper updated the Saudis and their surveillance team flew out to Pisa at once, ready to monitor Channarong’s arrival and his progress towards Portofino. Two of the surveillance team then made a covert entry to the rental company’s compound under cover of darkness and fixed a tracking device to the Mercedes reserved for Channarong. They also attached a tyre exploding device to the inside of one of the front tyres. It was invisible to anyone walking around the car and only a trained eye would have spotted it even if they had wormed their way under the chassis.

  The Al Shaheen had already sailed into Portofino. In summertime there were always plenty of super yachts around Portofino but this one was half as big again as the largest of the other yachts there. As soon as it berthed, tenders were shuttling between the yacht and Portofino, Rapallo and other towns up and down the coast, stocking up on vintage champagne, first growth claret and burgundy, and exotic foods. Meanwhile, a cadre of free-spending young Saudis were glad-handing VIPs, chatting up beautiful models and generally creating a buzz about what was already being described as ‘the party of the season’ to be held on the yacht the following week. It was the talk of every fashionable restaurant on the Ligurian coast and as far away as Florence, Milan and Monte Carlo, with the rich and super-rich falling over themselves to get an invitation.

  To Harper’s delight, the Saudis also reported that two men who appeared to be of Thai nationality had been sighted around the harbour. They might only have been tourists except that they were paying the Saudi yacht an undue amount of attention and
photographing it. Communication intercepts revealed that long-distance calls had been made from a mobile phone in the area to a Thai number linked to Channarong. ‘He’s taken the bait,’ Harper said. ‘We’re definitely in business.’

  Harper had already surveyed the route that the Thais were likely to take to Portofino. The obvious route, the dual carriageway autostrada built in recent years with lavish EU grants, ran from Pisa to within the last few miles to Portofino, but offered no realistic opportunities for an ambush. The old main road though the mountains and along the coast, the Strada Statale 1, following the line of the ancient Via Aurelia that dated back to Roman times, offered far more opportunities.

  It was a twisting, serpentine road running through the coastal ranges and the mountains of the Cinque Terre, with frequent sharp bends, steep climbs and descents. Even the Romans hadn’t been able to build straight roads through the terrain. There were long stretches of forest punctuated by bridges over steep ravines, and small, sleepy villages, their shutters closed against the fierce midday sun. The sea was never far away but remained invisible, hidden by trees and steep rocky hillsides.

  About twenty miles from Portofino, just before the road descended from the mountains to run all the way along the Ligurian coast to Portofino, a broad but rough gravel track led off the side of the road, just before the crash barriers as the Strada Statale 1 crossed a steep, densely wooded ravine. The gravel track curved around, out of sight of the road, to the back of a group of ruinous buildings, all that was left of the stone or marble quarry that had long since fallen into disuse and been abandoned. A rusting chain-link fence still blocked the entrance, though it looked as if a strong gust of wind would have blown it down. The buildings were all roofless, the shattered earthenware roof-tiles piled in heaps inside the crumbling walls and that, as much as its precarious position above the precipitous ravine, had probably led to the erection of a now sun-faded sign reading Attenzione! Fabbricati Pericolanti!