by Andy Maslen
“Much. So tell me. If he’s planning all this why don’t you just arrest him under the Prevention of Terrorism Act?”
“I don’t know. Like I said, above my pay grade.”
She tipped her glass back and drained it in one swallow. He watched her throat move as the cool white wine disappeared.
“Is there any more of this delicious stuff?”
He fetched another bottle and after their glasses were both refilled, she fixed him with a stare.
“So, Gabriel. Are you in?”
“He’s the kind of man I would rather stay away from, to be honest. But if what you say is true, I don’t have much choice, do I?”
“Sure you have a choice,” Britta said, laughing. “You can work with me on this nasty business … or I’ll have to kill you. Again. I’m a little tipsy. This wine is too nice.”
“Come on. I’ll make some coffee.”
She followed him through to the sitting room and flopped into a leather armchair while he selected a jazz piano album from the shelf of CDs that filled an entire wall. As the slinky opening notes of Around Midnight filled the room, he went to make coffee. He needed to think. He returned bearing a tray with a cafetière, two cups and some steamed milk, to see Britta at the bookcase, her head tilted on one side as she read the titles off the spines.
“Never knew you were such a deep thinker,” she said, pulling out a copy of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. “I used to dream about you sometimes, you know.” She put the book down and came closer. Looked at him and touched her fingers to her throat. “Even when I was with Per, if you can believe it?”
“Of course I can believe it. Per was a wanker.”
She hiccupped and laughed at the same time.
“You’re a very bad man and you know it.” Then she stepped closer still. “I’ve had too much wine to drive.”
Gabriel leaned in and kissed her. She kissed him back, meeting his gentle pressure with a more insistent pressure of her own. He placed his hands on the curve of her hips and they stood like that for a few seconds, enjoying each other’s taste. Then she pulled back a little, just enough to catch a breath.
“I’ve waited a long time to do that.”
“I know. Me too. What do you want to do now?”
They made love in his bedroom. Slowly at first as they explored each other’s bodies, then more urgently, as if making up for lost time. Britta came, sitting astride him, then collapsed over onto one side of the bed. Gabriel moved on top of her, looking into her eyes, holding her shoulders down against the pillow. He called her name as he finished and leant down to kiss the triangular constellation of freckles on her neck. He rested his face in the hollow of her right shoulder, waiting for his breathing to slow.
Later, after they had slept, they woke and made love again, tenderly, sleepily, listening to an owl hooting from the trees at the end of the garden.
When Britta awoke, Gabriel was already dressed. He came into the bedroom immaculate in grey suit, pale pink shirt and a navy knitted tie. He was carrying a tray.
She pushed herself upright in the bed, pushing her tousled hair out of her eyes, smudgy with sleep and last night’s makeup.
“Morning, sleepyhead” Gabriel said, placing the tray in front of her.
“Morning,” she mumbled. “How long have you been up?”
“Hours! Been for a ten-mile run, walked Seamus, caught up on some of my reading for Maitland and made you this.” He gestured at the scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, rye toast and coffee.
“Liar,” she growled.
“Yes. You’re right,” he said, looking contrite. “I didn’t do the reading.”
While she ate he filled her in on what he’d learned of Maitland’s operation.
“There’s a little club of intern-types and a couple of political minders – they seem harmless enough. But there’s something else.”
“What?”
“I saw a group of men, well, more of a squad, on the land near the house. Not army, but maybe private contractors, Blackstone types, you know?”
“I hate those mercenaries. What were they doing?” she said through a mouthful of eggs and toast.
“Just on a run. Are they part of his private army?”
“That’s what we’d like you to find out. I said I’d get a full dossier for you if you said yes. It’s in my bag. I left it downstairs.”
Britta jumped out of bed. Gabriel admired her bottom as she wriggled into her jeans and shrugged last night’s T-shirt over her head.
She reappeared a few minutes later clutching a manila folder to her chest. She held it out to him then climbed onto the bed and sat cross-legged. While Gabriel read, she wiped the last piece of toast round her plate and drank the last of her coffee.
“This is all kosher, is it?” he asked, finally.
“As chopped liver. He’s a sweetie, isn’t he?”
“Contacts with all the ultra-nationalist parties in Europe. Business dealings with Turkish people traffickers, Russian mafia, Hells Angels from Norway. How come you haven’t pulled him in? Or just disappeared him to Guantanamo, come to that? The guy’s a neo-Nazi in handmade suits from Savile Row.”
“Like I said, I don’t know. It’s democracy at work. ‘I defend to the death your right to say it’ and all that bullshit.”
“Yeah, well, Voltaire never said that. Anyway, I don’t like fascists. Especially not arrogant plutocrats like Maitland.”
“Good. It’s why they picked you. So go into work, dig around, find out exactly what he’s planning. And be discreet, Gabriel. We know he trusts you but there’s no sense in making him suspicious.”
Britta leaned back against the pillows and stretched, pushing her breasts against the thin material of her T-shirt.
“Now, before you go, is there anything I can do to tempt you out of those immaculate English clothes of yours?”
He looked at her, and ran his hand along her thigh.
“I can’t. I want to, but I can’t. I have to go.”
“OK, Gabriel. Guess it can wait till another day, eh? Are you going to kick me out?”
“No, you stay there, go back to bed if you want. Just pull the door to on your way out and what, we’ll speak on the phone?”
“Sure. I’m back in London today to meet my masters but they want me to ‘offer all appropriate assistance’ as the saying goes. Kiss?”
He leaned down and kissed her. Once on each eyelid and once full on the mouth.
“Got to go,” he groaned, as he detached her hand from the front of his suit trousers where it was tugging on the zip.
He was back at Rokeby Manor by 7.30.
Chapter 9
Gabriel was sitting at his desk, jotting ideas, listening to the others animatedly discussing their publicity plans. Maitland had finally given him something to do. Some messages for a speech at a local hustings.
“Something to rally the yeomanry,” had been the brief, more or less. Fighting for Britain. Stronger at home and abroad. Keep the undesirables out. Usual bonehead rhetoric for the extreme right, dressed up in more emollient language for the middle classes who might be listening.
He was doodling a tank on the lawn of Number 10 Downing Street when the door opened with a muffled swish as it rubbed across the deep pile of the Turkish rug. Gabriel and the others looked up as one. It was Lady Maitland, looking far younger than the forty-nine years he knew her age to be from the dossier.
She was wearing fawn suede high heels and a white linen trouser suit, cut to accentuate her long legs. Diamonds sparkled on her earlobes, matching a huge gem on a gold chain that lay in the notch of her collarbones. Unlike Britta, whose skin was always tanned, and spattered with freckles across the bridge of her nose, Vix had an even, pale complexion, powdered to an ethereal smoothness. All in all, a statement of wealth, power and self-assurance Gabriel was forced to admire. As she crossed the room to his desk, he flipped the top sheet on his writing pad over.
“Gabriel. I wonder if
I could ask a teensy favour. I need to be in London for a lunch appointment and I’m afraid I’ve bruised my foot rather badly playing tennis. It’s killing me wearing these heels but a girl has to look her best.” She gave him a wink as she said this. “So,” she said, trailing a finger across the top edge of his computer monitor, “would you be an absolute darling and drive me? I could tell you about Toby and why he ought to be running things around here. You could call it preparatory interviewing.” She looked down at the blank sheet of notepaper in front of him. “As I see, you’re not making a great deal of headway.”
“It’s fine by me, Lady Maitland, but Toby seems to like us to stay where he can find us.”
“Please, call me Vix, everybody does,” she said. “And let’s not worry about my husband. He has your mobile number, doesn’t he? Well, then.”
That appeared to settle it. Gabriel followed her out of the room, for all the world like a servant, not a self-employed contractor hired to write speeches. He noted the mocking looks from the others, pulled a wide-eyed “what’re you gonna do” face, and pulled the door closed behind him. Ten minutes later he was piloting the Ferrari 458 along a back road, heading for London, Lady Maitland – Vix – sitting next to him, her shoes kicked off in the footwell. He glanced over: no bruises.
“So who’s the better driver in these cars, then, mother or daughter?” he said.
The woman’s face changed in an instant. Her mouth turned down and she looked away, out of the side window.
“Lizzie’s not my daughter. I’m Toby’s second wife. I wanted children, but he said one was enough for him.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realise he’d been married before.”
“Why would you? He’s a man who likes to control what people know about him.”
“So, was he divorced already when you met?”
Gabriel knew this from Britta’s dossier, but wanted Vix to give him her version of the story.
“Elinor was killed in the London tube bombing in 2005. He’s never got over her death. I was there to comfort him. We used to run a business together. Then, you know, things followed their course and he ended up proposing. You've met him, Gabriel, he can be so charming. I just wanted to take care of him, he was in such pain.” She sniffed. “Anyway, enough of ghosts.” She turned to him with a brittle, forced smile. “Don’t drive her like it’s your first time, Gabriel. Why don’t you open her up? I’m sure you want to.”
“I believe I will,” he said.
He tapped the paddle twice to drop down from fourth to second. The revs rose to a scream as he floored the accelerator pedal, snatching the two gears back again as the car surged forward.
Vix squealed with delight.
“Yes! Do it. I love it!”
He laughed despite himself. He couldn’t help but enjoy her unashamed pleasure in the car’s performance. He looked across as she threw her head back in a full-throated laugh. For a second he imagined kissing that long, slender neck. Then she screamed.
“Look out!”
He flicked his eyes ahead to see a deer clearing the hedge on their side of the road in a massive leap, its antlers like two tree branches. They hit the animal doing close to 100. The sound as its body hit the bonnet was immense inside the car. Gabriel swerved right, but the deer had fallen under the front wheels, almost cut in half by the sharp nose of the Ferrari. The car left the ground in a corkscrew motion, rotating a full 360 degrees before slamming down onto the tarmac. All six airbags had exploded out of their cartridges, cushioning Gabriel and Vix from the worst of the crash. The car slid along the road for another 50 or 60 yards, the two front wheels splayed by the impact, showering sparks where the floor pan shrieked along the road surface.
“Vix. Vix. Are you OK?”
But he could see that she was very far from OK. Her head was hanging down on her chest and her breathing was coming in ragged gasps. A stream of blood was dribbling from the corner of her mouth and soaking into her trousers. He unclipped her seatbelt and tilted her back against her seat. Then he freed himself and staggered round to her side of the car. He wrenched the door open. It was crumpled but the catch gave with a grind of metal. He slid his hands under her legs and armpits and heaved her backwards. They fell to the ground on the grass verge just as the petrol pooling under the car ignited with a soft whomp.
Gabriel struggled out from under her inert body and picked her up, her head lolling against his chest, more blood now flowing out of her mouth. He turned and began walking away from the car. He’d gone about 20 metres when the fuel tank exploded. The flash of light reached them first, then the noise – a bang as if the air itself were tearing. Gabriel stumbled as the pressure wave hit him in the back but kept walking, knowing from the way she hung across his arms that Vix was dead. Shards of bright-edged metal and scorched plastic rained down and bounced off the road surface. Then nothing. The hulk of the once-beautiful car sat on exploded tyres, flames roaring from its ruined interior. He bent down and lay Vix’s inert body on the verge, cradling her head to prevent it banging against the earth. Her face was lacerated where the airbag had hit it, and the talc the manufacturers used to pack the thin latex envelope had given her the white mask of a Pierrot clown.
He sat down next to her, talking softly.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. We’ll get you home, don’t worry. I won’t leave you behind.”
He pulled out his phone and hit the emergency dialler.
“Which service do you require, please?” a pleasant, calm female voice answered.
“Ambulance. Fire. Police. There’s been a car accident. A woman is dead.”
He gave his location as best as he was able then ended the call, and began checking his own condition. As the adrenaline ebbed away from his bloodstream, pain replaced it. Both lower legs were bruised where they had hit the underside of the dash. His ribs ached, though none were broken. He heaved a few deep breaths to be sure – the sharp ends of broken ribs create an unmistakable pain deep inside the chest cavity, one that Gabriel had experienced before, and was grateful to have avoided this time. Suddenly a wave of shaking took hold. Uncontrollable. A secondary surge of adrenaline. He lay back and let it wash over him. Then all went dark as his brain decided it had had enough and curtains swung shut over his vision.
“Mr Wolfe? Gabriel? Can you hear me?”
Gabriel allowed his eyelids to flutter open, waiting for pain that didn’t arrive. A woman was looking down at him. She was dressed in a weird coral outfit. He could see himself reflected in her glasses. They had thin rectangular wire frames. The tiny Gabriels in the lenses were wearing some kind of pale green dress.
“There you are!” she said. “Good. We wondered if you were going to bother. There was an accident, I’m afraid. You hit a deer. I want you to answer a couple of little questions for me, is that OK?”
He nodded, then winced as a bolt of pain shot across the space behind his right eye.
“Jolly good. Would you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?”
He answered. The woman paused.
“Who did you say?”
“Sir Toby Maitland.”
She frowned.
“Not quite. Anyway, another question.” She held up three fingers. He noticed a plain gold wedding ring and another behind it set with a big shiny diamond. Engagement. Engage the enemy. “How many fingers do you see, Gabriel? How many fingers?”
“Gabriel Wolfe. Captain. Seven-oh-two-four-four-nine-six-five.”
That’s all you’re getting. Do your worst.
The neurosurgeon turned to the nurse and houseman on her left.
“Concussion. Not very surprising. Keep him under observation. Page me if he comes to.” She left the room, checking her watch. Then turned. “Oh and maybe locate this Maitland character.”
Gabriel knew he was in trouble. Captured by the PALM. Well, that’s what the training was for. Plus the years with Master Zhao had given him an even sharper edge. He focused on his breathing, letting it slow a
nd become regular. Felt the subtle cooling at the edge of his nostrils.
He could hear gunfire. Chattering automatic fire from AKs and the more widely spaced cracks of pistols: Brownings and Makarovs. A firefight has a very distinctive smell. Burnt propellant and hot brass from the cartridges. Sweat, maybe blood, maybe piss. And something else. A sharp, acrid tang. They never called it fear. Some guys called it bloodlust. Others, battle fever. But it was the unmistakable stench of men striving to kill other men. It hadn’t changed for a couple of hundred thousand years. Hormones, salts, enzymes, metabolic by-products like fatty acids and free radicals: an unholy cocktail that you didn’t so much smell as absorb. Kill or be killed. The oldest rule in the book.
There was screaming, too. Men moaning in pain. Smudge had been hit. Part of his head had flown away into the trees as a 7.62 mm AK bullet had smashed into the back of his skull, carried on through his brain pan and torn itself a gaping exit wound out through his face.
“Don’t leave me, Boss. Please? Take me back. It’s Nathalie’s birthday. She’s gonna be nine. I want to see her.”
How could Smudge talk without a face?
“Don’t worry, Smudge, you’ll see Nathalie, I promise.”
But then the heavy machine gun opened up. He could see the muzzle flash where the insurgents had welded the Dushka’s tripod to the back of their Toyota Land Cruiser. A tree toppled to his left where a round had smashed through the trunk. Someone called out. It was Dusty.
“Boss, we have to go! Now! Leave Smudge. He’s gone.”
“It’s all right, Boss,” Smudge said, his tongue lolling from his ruined face. “Come back for me, though, won’t you? Take me home to see Nat?”
Just then a round from the Dushka slammed into Gabriel’s chest. It took out his internal organs and left his head connected to his pelvis by a bloody column of spine and muscle.
He screamed and jerked awake.
The room was still, but not silent. A handful of machines were wired into him and they beeped and hummed. The beeping was his heart rate: one-ten. Too high. He tried an experiment – focused on his breathing. Slowed it down. Let his thoughts fade until all he was, was breath. The beeping slowed, sliding down a curve from one hundred and ten to ninety seventy, sixty then fifty. A shrill squealing startled him. The digits on the screen had changed from green to red and were flashing. Within seconds doctors and nurses burst into the room, their faces taut with concern but not panic: this was business as usual. Gabriel sat up in bed, careful not to dislodge any of the wires, clips or electrodes taped to his skin.
