by Andy Maslen
“Carpe diem, gentlemen. And ladies. Carpe diem.”
The Police Commissioner spoke again.
“That’s all very well, Toby, old man. But can we be one hundred percent confident this is going to work? I mean, are you absolutely sure you aren’t rushing it just a bit? It’s just, three days to train a bunch of amateurs to use Brownings against helicopters seems rather a tall order, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Maitland’s expression underwent a lightning-fast transformation. His skin blanched, giving him a greasy pallor, and his mouth tightened. He jumped to his feet and leaned across the table, jabbing a pointing finger at the startled policeman.
“I don’t give a flying fuck about your saying so, William,” he shouted. “This my destiny, and destiny doesn’t wait until, what did you say last year, ‘the moment is propitious’? That jumped-up housewife with her degree in economics is overflying my estate in three days’ time, and in three days’ time we will shred her and her pathetic opinions with the Browning machine guns that Gabriel and I brought in from the States while you were sitting in your office dreaming of the power I’m going to bestow on you. Or should I find someone else to head my Internal Security Service?”
Cragg had turned pale and a small muscle was twitching beneath his right eye. The others were motionless. He spoke.
“I’m sorry, Toby. Forgive me. The plan is a good one.”
Maitland sat down again, swept the hank of blond hair out of his eyes and continued as if nothing had happened. The conversation moved on to matters political and organisational. Gabriel lost interest, principally because he had no intention of ever letting Maitland get anywhere close to power. If it came to it he’d take him out with a stick.
Gabriel snapped back from his reverie in which he was beating Maitland to death with a cricket bat.
“I’ve had a light lunch prepared next door,” Maitland was saying. “So if you’d like to follow me?”
Somehow the meeting had concluded while he’d been daydreaming of the different ways he could kill Maitland. Gabriel let the others through the double doors first then followed, taking a long look at the oak-panelled room before closing the door behind him. After lunch, the men and Marcia Hollands drove, or were driven, back to their own offices. Maitland placed a hand under Gabriel’s elbow.
“That was an interesting point you made about the Prime Minister and her flight plans. Tell me, who briefed you on that?”
Gabriel knew he had to think fast. He came out with the first excuse he could think of. A weak one.
“Nobody. I must have seen it on the news or something.”
“That seems most unlikely. It’s a security protocol, not the sort of thing they sandwich between illegal immigrants and EU regulations.”
Come on, Gabriel. He’s watching you. Take a risk.
“OK. Look, I wasn’t going to tell you this because you might hold it against me, but I was on a protection detail for one of her trips to Africa just before I left The Regiment. They briefed us on everything. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to think I was loyal to her.”
Maitland’s lips unpursed and his face relaxed. Then he laughed. A mirthless sound like a TV newsreader reacting to a skateboarding dog.
“OK, Gabriel, you can stand easy. You were a soldier. Just following orders, am I right? Of course you were. Now, let’s get down to the barn and set you up. I have asked Franz to join us.”
Another farm, another barn. In many respects this one was similar to Bart Venter’s. Corrugated steel construction, concrete base. Racks of automatic weapons. No Bradleys, though.
Some appreciation felt appropriate, so Gabriel let out a soft, low whistle. It was the right thing to do.
“Impressed?”
“Very.”
“These,” Maitland swept his arm in an arc towards the racks of weapons, “are just for the purposes of the takeover. Once we have control of the Army, they will seem like a toy collection.”
The thought of Maitland in charge of the killing resources of the British Army made Gabriel’s skin prickle with tension. Franz was already there, assembling tools on a blocky wooden table lit by three halogen lamps. So, he was more than just someone who arranged for priceless cars to be serviced and taxed.
“Franz! Stop what you’re doing and explain to Gabriel how far you’ve got with the preparations.”
Franz put down a large adjustable wrench and stumped over. He pointed over to a corner of the barn where two large, dull-grey containers sat against the wall, each large enough to hold a man.
“Horse troughs. Galvanised steel. Filled with industrial paint stripper used by car restoration firms. We place the Brownings in them to soak off the paint. Wear those,” he said, pointing at two pairs of thick rubber gauntlets on the table where’d he’d been working. “It is very aggressive. It will eat away your skin. And I have tools. For the removal of the weapon parts from the machine. A potato harvester, yes?”
“Yes.”
“We have those in Germany, too. On my uncle’s farm I saw them working. One could do the work of twenty men. Very productive.”
“Yes, well, Franz, we don’t need a lesson in German agricultural efficiency,” Maitland butted in. “It’s a cover story. We don’t even grow potatoes – bloody Mick food.”
Gabriel thought he detected a small downturning of the German’s mouth. The jibe at German efficiency struck home, as all Maitland’s barbs did.
Maitland’s phone rang.
“Yes. Yes. OK. Thank you.” He turned to Gabriel. “They’re here.”
“The Brownings?”
“No, the dinner guests. Of course the Brownings! Grab that can of petrol over there and come with me.”
Chapter 37
Maitland turned on his heel and marched back towards the house. Gabriel had no option but to follow. He nodded to Franz, who returned the nod with a rueful expression suggestive of a man who not only followed orders but enjoyed doing so.
In front of Rokeby Manor itself, an articulated lorry stood in the gravel circle in front of the front door. It was as if a skinhead had gatecrashed a chamber music recital. The driver, late twenties, beer belly, wispy beard, had already run out the ramps from the back. He was staring into the truck’s interior, hands on hips, lost in admiration of the cargo. Maitland was talking to the man as Gabriel caught up.
“Go round to the kitchen, my butler will make you a cup of tea. I’ll send someone for you when we’re done here.”
Once the man had disappeared in the direction indicated by Maitland’s pointing finger, he turned to Gabriel.
“Normally this would be a job for Franz, but as he’s otherwise engaged, I wonder, Gabriel, would you get the D-Type down for me?”
He held out the key, a plain, slender object on a leather fob. It had none of the pumped-up black plastic that characterised every modern car’s key. No buttons for central locking, boot opening or lights. It looked for all the world as though it would fit a gym locker rather than a priceless classic car. Gabriel accepted it as if it were a religious icon. It was hard not to feel a trace of the glamour that must once have attached itself to this sliver of plated brass.
“OK. Thank you.”
He climbed up into the trailer with the petrol can and opened the filler cap. Once he’d poured the fuel into narrow aperture, careful not to spill a drop onto the paintwork, he walked round to the driver’s door. Maitland called up after him.
“Just keep it on the ramps or it comes out of your wages.”
Plan or no plan, Gabriel could feel his stomach contracting and his pulse rising at the thought of dropping this beautiful car off one of the ramps. He settled himself in the thinly padded leather seat and pushed the key home into the ignition. Amazingly, to him at least, the car started at once. Ash Taylor must have his own Franz.
The Jaguar’s 3.8 litre straight-six engine settled into a smooth idle. Gabriel pushed the slim steel gear lever into reverse and inched the car back towards
the ramps. They clanged, then settled into the ground as the weight of the car’s rear end pushed down and the tips bit into the gravel. Gabriel feathered the throttle and let out the clutch by another fraction and eased rather than drove the car backwards. For one horrible moment he thought the middle of the undertray of the car would scrape the join between the trailer floor and the ramps, but they were long enough to create a shallow angle the D-Type could clear without mishap.
Maitland was no help at all. No beckoning hands or nervous leaning to left or right. Gabriel just held the thin-rimmed steering wheel straight, switched from the throttle pedal to the brake as the car’s weight transferred onto the slope, prayed, then let the weight of the car pull it down until it rolled to a stop a couple of feet clear of the ramps.
“Bravo!” Maitland said, clapping. He looked like a small boy whose father had bought him the ultimate pedal car. Which, Gabriel reflected, wasn’t so far from the truth. “I’ll take it from here. You get that down,” he said, pointing at the harvester. Get the driver to help you.”
Maitland slid down into the driver’s seat, let his hands caress the gear stick and the steering wheel, selected first and pulled away. The smell of high-octane fuel was intoxicating and Gabriel sniffed the air, raising his head like a dog scenting game. He wandered off to fetch the driver, hoping he’d at least finished his tea.
They worked together, under the driver’s instruction, and soon the harvester was sitting on the gravel in the spot just vacated by the D-Type. Maitland emerged from the front door and strutted towards them. He pressed a twenty-pound note into the driver’s hand.
“This is for you,” he said, then turned to Gabriel. “You have some work to do. I’ve called Franz.”
The lorry roared away, its driver changing up through three gears before the sound of its big diesel power plant faded from their hearing. Gabriel watched the cloud of smoke drift into the tall birch trees in the field beyond the drive. Shafts of sunlight, splintered by the spring leaves, lit up the fumes, creating patchy yellow diagonals through the grey smoke.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Maitland said. He laid an arm around Gabriel’s shoulders.
“What? Oh, yes.” Surely Maitland wasn’t a poet – seeing beauty in the mundane emissions from a forty-foot container truck.
“This land of ours, Gabriel. This beautiful land of ours. It is our heritage. And we must fight to preserve it. There are those who would build over it. Bring in more people, let them breed like rabbits, order us to surrender our land for development. Sign away our historic freedoms to those leeches in Brussels. Increase the taxes we pay – willingly, I might add, if they’re going to our people and not to prop up third-world dictators and their cronies. They must be stopped, and I am the man of the hour.”
“And I will help you, Toby. Your dream is my dream.”
“Thank you. Now, there’s Franz. I’ll leave you to it. Duty calls.”
He left just as Franz arrived, behind the wheel of a petrol blue Land Rover – an old, slab-sided model with a pickup bed and deeply grooved tyres. Together, they attached the harvester to the tow-ball, then Gabriel climbed into the passenger seat while Franz drove down the rutted track to the barn, the basic suspension jolting them over every clod of sun-baked earth and pothole. Behind them, the potato harvester twisted and bounced, for all the world like a reluctant horse being pulled by a halter to be saddled for the first time.
Once at the barn, they unhitched the harvester and let its front end down onto the concrete. Franz disappeared into the barn’s gloomy interior and reappeared with the big wrench he’d been cleaning earlier, plus a socket set in a blow-moulded grey plastic carrying case.
“I wasn’t sure what you’d used, but I have Whitworth, AF and metric.”
They worked in silence. The paint had sealed the nuts and bolts holding the parts of the Brownings in place on their brackets, but an extra-long driver for the sockets gave them sufficient leverage to crack the seals. Shaun had used a thin slick of copper grease on each bolt before threading the nuts home, so they turned with minimal force. With the nuts laid out in a neat row along the floor – more of Franz’s German efficiency, Gabriel supposed, or just a mild case of OCD – it was a simple two-man job to unbend the brackets and lift out the machine gun parts and carry them into the barn.
One by one they lowered the rear assemblies, firing mechanisms, barrels and tripods into the troughs of paint stripper, being careful not to splash themselves, even with the elbow-length gauntlets. After a few seconds, the caustic liquid began to dissolve the paint. The smell was too harsh to stay looking in at the troughs for long, so they went back outside into the sunlight again.
Franz spoke.
“They will take two or three hours. Probably three. You should go to your home. I will let Sir Toby know when they are clean and you can come back and help me assemble them.”
“Works for me. I’ll see you later.”
Gabriel trotted back up to the house. He was keen to get back and brief Britta and Lauren. And to hear what they had managed to put in place. He ran into Maitland at the back of the house. As he was climbing into the Maserati, Maitland emerged from the garage, beaming.
“Off so soon? Are they done?”
“Well, they’re off the harvester. Franz has them soaking in the paint stripper. Says it’s going to be three hours minimum till they’re ready. I’m going to go home and let my dog out.” Gabriel sighed inwardly at the need to use his dead companion as a ruse. He might keep me here otherwise, boy, but he respects old-school duties. “It might be a long night. Franz says he’ll tell you when he’s done with the M2s and then I’ll come back and we’ll prepare them for firing.”
“Very good. Well, don’t let me keep you. I’m sure your dog will want to see his master.”
Gabriel looked up at Maitland, searching for a flicker of, what? Suspicion? But he saw nothing. The man’s eyes were flat, dull pools, no light reflecting off them or illuminating them from within. He pulled the paddle to engage first and eased the big sports car away and round the house to the drive. When he arrived home, Britta and Lauren were sitting at the big kitchen table, drinking tea.
“So, how was it? What’s the plan?” Britta said.
“Theirs or ours?”
“Theirs. Once we know that we can decide on ours.”
“It’s very simple, really. They’re going to set up two firing positions on Maitland’s land under the flight paths of the helicopter. Bring it down, blame it on this group of extremists called the League of English Patriots and then fly up to London and seize power. As you do.”
“Hold on a minute,” Lauren said. “Two positions? I thought you said that the Prime Minister would have three flight plans, Britta.”
“I did,” Britta said, looking at Gabriel. “How are they going to cover all three?”
“I don’t know. I tried to get it out of Maitland but he brushed it aside. Said they could cover all three from two positions.”
“And can they?”
“I don’t know. Hold on.” He rose from the table and opened a drawer in a cupboard, came back with an Ordnance Survey Map. “Help me with this would you, please?”
They spread the map out on the table then leaned over it looking for Andover.
“Here it is,” Gabriel said, stabbing his finger at the dot on the map. “And here’s the Army HQ at Marlborough Lines.”
“OK,” Britta said. “If they’re coming from London, then the three flight paths will be here, here and here. She traced three lines on the map with a finger. That’s what my colleagues told me today.”
“So look,” Gabriel said. “The middle one and the bottom one go right through Maitland’s estate. I assume he’ll have the Brownings set up somewhere along those routes. But the top one is nowhere near his land. He can’t risk anything there – it’s all developed, motorway or MOD land. What’s he playing at?”
“I don’t know,” Lauren said. “But that works in our favour. Unless he k
nows something we don’t then there’s a one in three chance the PM’s not going to fly over Maitland’s firing positions.”
“In which case we move in after the PM leaves Army HQ and catch Maitland with the Brownings,” Britta said. “They’re restricted weapons so catching him in possession will give us enough to haul him in for questioning.”
“Can’t we just warn the PM somehow?” Lauren asked.
“Too risky,” Britta said. “We don’t know who we can trust.”
“I’m not sure what Maitland’s planning,” Gabriel said. “He seems confident for a man with only two out of three bases covered. I’ll try to find out what he’s got planned. Maybe Lizzie’s a way in.”
Britta frowned, her forehead crinkling into furrows. “Oh, I’d be careful there. I talked to some people today. She’s more extreme than her father. Less high profile but she’s cultivated some contacts with a bunch of people who, believe me, you would not want to meet in a dark alley.”
“Like who?”
“Oh, most of the right-wing political figures in Europe. That loony Dutchman. The guy in Hungary. The Front National in France. Plus the editors of a handful of really, really unpleasant right-wing websites. You want to talk Holocaust denial? It’s not even a detail of history according to them. The whole thing was fabricated by the Allies for propaganda purposes, if you believe what they write.”
“Wow. OK, I didn’t know that. They’ve used her to honey-trap some warrant officer into smuggling out the ammunition for the Brownings but I didn’t realise she was on board with the whole political side of things. I thought she was just a Daddy’s girl.”
“Maybe she is just trying to win his love because he ignored her as a child, but I’ll leave that to the shrinks when we arrest her. Either way, she’s dangerous. So watch your step.”
“How about your recce on the estate, Lauren?” Gabriel asked. “Did you learn anything we can use?”
“Not much you couldn’t get from a map like that one. I saw some guys dressed up like weekend warriors in a clearing way to the south of the house. Know anything about them?”
