Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men)

by Ranulph Fiennes

  They chatted together in the tiny motel room for three hours. Pia understood that Davies wanted her to entertain an important customer in the Bois the following Tuesday night. If the man failed to turn up, she would still be paid by Davies and they would try again on successive Tuesdays. She looked at a photograph of the judge until she was certain she would recognize him. She also memorized the details of his Citroën. She accepted Davies’s assurances that she would be able to ply her trade on the agreed-upon night or nights at the prime Bois site that he had described to her, for the normal occupants would be well paid to accept her temporary presence there.

  Davies took Pia back to her lodgings not long before dawn, but first he drove her to the chosen site and together they walked into the forest to a section of loose undergrowth unlittered by the ubiquitous condoms of the well-used patches.

  Excited at the prospect of major earnings in the near future and grasping the half-empty whiskey bottle, Pia waved fondly at the departing Davies.

  The judge slipped into his astrakhan overcoat and looked about his office close to the Ile de la Cité. He was a careful man and cheated on his wife with the same attention to detail as he handled his cases. Nothing was left to chance. From time to time he did work for the security service and not all of it was savory. For many reasons it was wise to be circumspect.

  In the underground car park he selected the keys to the old Citroën ID19. Only the attendant knew about the Citroën and he was tipped to the eyebrows. The world in general, and certainly his family, associated the judge only with his black Alfa-Romeo. But he still felt a sliver of unease. Despite the many threats he had received over the years he was never able to ignore open hostility and the woman last month had been especially venomous. He had put the three brothers from Marseilles away for life for murder and conspiracy to blackmail. Quite which one the woman belonged to was uncertain, but he remembered her beetle-black eyes above the mink coat and the intensity of her brittle scream: “You bastard. You destroy his life. Now I destroy yours.” He made an effort to forget her, to concentrate on the sharp pleasures of the immediate future.

  Two years ago, driving home through the Bois de Boulogne in the early morning, the judge had chanced to pass a teenage transvestite named Zita. Whether it was his mood at the time, the flux of the moon, or merely the effect of his headlights on her cheekbones and thighs, he did not bother to ponder. She possessed a magnificent body, pert little breasts and ash-blond, shoulder-length hair. He later discovered that Zita alternated a wardrobe of ten wigs, but by then he was hooked.

  His table of Rotarian colleagues met on Tuesday evenings for nine months of the year, and since the judge had never looked at another woman, his wife in their well-appointed flat in La Muette, was not suspicious. He developed a routine. Once away from the office he exchanged his astrakhan for the scruffy flasher’s mac and cloth cap that lived in the Citroën. Thus transformed, he felt safe from recognition in the Bois and titillated by the touch of the bizarre, the forbidden, that enhanced the whole procedure.

  He ceased to be bothered by middle-age feelings of rusting away. Life was no longer a mundane groove. Should he be discovered in pursuit of his perversion, his career and his marriage would not survive the shock. He savored, indeed nurtured, the risk in much the same way as a climber relishes a dizzy void.

  Fearing the darker, less accessible parts of the Bois, the judge habitually cruised the main thoroughfares, especially the northern end of the Avenue du Mahatma Gandhi. He invariably chose tall, fair transvestites, a hangover perhaps from Zita, who had killed herself in a public lavatory not long after introducing him to the dubious pleasures of the Bois. He grew to love the alien smell of the earth and the sounds of the forest as he pounded away in the scrub. To the judge, sex without the Bois soon became like strawberries without cream.

  Three weeks passed before the judge spotted Pia. He parked the Citroën and listened to her argue with a pock-faced Moroccan.

  “You are not busy,” he whined. “Three times I come by here and always you are free. Maybe you don’t like Arabs. Huh? Come on, I pay you double.” Pia’s response was negative.

  “Va te faire sauter ailleurs, conasse,” shouted the frustrated Arab, moving on to a buxom brunette.

  The judge edged the car forward as soon as Pia was alone on the verge.

  He spoke gently. “A hundred and fifty for an hour?”

  She responded at once. She was not absolutely sure about him because the cap shadowed his features. But the car was enough.

  “I’m all yours, darling … let’s go.”

  She led him by the hand to a tiny clearing in a thicket.

  “How do you like it, m’sieu?”

  He explained and was quoted an extra fifty francs. This was normal and he agreed. When both were naked but for the judge’s black socks, Pia lay on her back on a prepositioned tartan rug. She spread her legs and smiled up at her client.

  Davies rehoused the CB radio. “De Villiers says the judge has taken the bait.” He closed the trunk quietly and handed Meier one of two iron bars. These he had purchased together with other farm implements from a hardware store in Dieppe a week previously.

  Both men, clad in baggy, gray cotton track suits over slacks and shirts, entered the forest. Davies led without a flashlight: he knew the path well. Only that afternoon he had walked along its winding length and removed twigs for the last hundred yards and right up to the thicket. Twice he hissed at his companion. He never liked this sort of work with Meier.

  De Villiers himself was quiet as a cat and quick as an adder, but Meier, short-sighted and unfit, verged on being a liability. He was, however, undeniably brilliant with technical matters: no electronic or mechanical challenge was too great. Davies had often wondered why Meier had left the Mercedes factory in Wolfsburg where he had worked as a senior research scientist for nine years. Meier had, over the years, refined various electronic and mechanical methods of untraceable murder. He was an invaluable asset to the team and could be forgiven his nocturnal clumsiness.

  After five minutes Davies stopped by a solitary birch tree and raised his hand in the gloom of the forest. Both men could hear clearly the low grunts of pleasure and the ritual endearments of the travelo. Meier followed Davies closely. As always they had rehearsed the kill.

  The first blow of Davies’s iron bar split open the judge’s skull. Pia’s legs were clasped together around the judge’s back and the sudden shock of her terror seemed to lock them there. Davies dragged the corpse sideways so that Meier had access to Pia’s head and chest. She recognized Davies. Her voice rasped with fear.

  “Do not hurt me. Please. I have done exactly what you asked. You wanted a photograph. So take as many as you like, but I beg you, do not hit me.” Her long, white arms, already wet with the judge’s blood, stretched out in supplication.

  Meier brought his iron bar straight down on Pia’s temple. She relaxed. The rest was for show: a dozen wicked blows to her silicone-filled breasts and finally—the Manson touch as stipulated by de Villiers—the writing in blood across the judge’s back.

  They stood back and surveyed the scene. The corpses were still entwined. “We have done the poor girl a favor,” Davies muttered. “She had a miserable life and no future.”

  He removed the judge’s wallet, keys and credit-card holder. These and the iron bars he threw into the scrub after pocketing the banknotes and credit cards. A few minutes later they were driving back to Paris to rejoin de Villiers.

  • • •

  The bodies were found by a lorry driver, or, more precisely, by his traveling companion, a wire-haired terrier, the following afternoon.

  Patrol cars from the police districts of the eighth, sixteenth, and seventeenth arrondissements converged on the scene within minutes. The crime was classified as murder by youths in search of money for cocaine or, because of the word COCHONS crudely etched into the skin of the judge, the random work of crazed moralists. Either way an unhappy epitaph for the dece
ased. A government department blocked all media inquiries, perhaps because of past activities by the judge on their behalf. This was a move welcomed by the police, for the crime coincided with a good deal of criticism of moral laxity. It was yet another disgrace to the good name of France.

  Some months later Minister Poniatowski launched a “clean up the Bois” operation, the effects of which lasted for a few months, and in August 1983 the head of the Paris police, Monsieur Fougère, conducted Operation Salubrité with great élan and amid much publicity. Its effects were initially severe on the travelos, but in 1991 their business was still going strong and, like royalty in London, or the girls in Bangkok, was considered no bad thing by the relevant French authorities.

  4

  James Mason, an Englishman, was born on June 24, 1824; where and of whom is not well documented. He gained a degree in geology from Paris University and participated in France’s bloody revolution in 1848. He became manager of the Bilbao iron mines and made a fortune from copper extraction in São Domingos, southern Portugal, where he owned vast estates. The King of Portugal, alarmed at Mason’s increasing influence, sent an army to reestablish royal authority. Mason’s private security force defeated the soldiers, so the King, changing tack, ennobled the Briton with the title Conde de Pomarão, a hereditary title, held to this day by his great-grandson.

  Mason sank his fortune into the 4,000-acre estate of Eynsham Park, five miles west of Oxford. His only son had an affair with the King of Portugal’s daughter, married the Earl of Crawford’s daughter, was director of the Great Western Railway and in due course handed Eynsham Park to his only son, Michael.

  After Eton and Sandhurst, Michael became Army Boxing Champion in 1918 and traveled to Canada for three years as a prizefighter, bootlegger and hunter. In 1938 he was recruited by the Director of Naval Intelligence and spent much of the Second World War on clandestine assignments in Europe. A great sailor and traveler, he wrote many books and became High Sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1951. He died thirty years later, leaving Eynsham Park to his eldest son, David.

  Perhaps this unusual pedigree explains why David Mason was born without fear.

  On Sunday, October 31, 1976, a week after the killing of Pia and the judge in Paris, Captain David Mason’s alarm clock woke him from a deep sleep in his bedroom on the first floor of Buckingham Palace. He dressed as quickly as his uniform allowed and left the palace.

  Straightening his back, he walked over the gravel of the front courtyard. Above, in the cold autumn breeze, the Royal Standard fluttered to confirm that the Queen was in official residence. In fact, David knew, she had been away for some time. A gust caught at his bearskin as he emerged past the police sentry box. Instinctively he braced his lower jaw against the chin strap and cursed the fact that it did not lie below his chin at all, but sat just below his lower lip. The bearskin itself was hollow, with plenty of room for carrying loose items. The previous week one of David’s guardsmen had been caught on sentry duty with a transistor radio tuned to Radio Caroline on his head. When approached by the ensign, he had come smartly to attention and jogged the volume control. He got eight days’ detention.

  Such temptations had been unknown in the less boring days when the sentry boxes were outside the palace railings. Sadly the tourists had grown more and more familiar when posing for photos—sometimes girls would strip—and even steal items of uniform. The young guardsmen could only grin and bear the indignities, so they had been brought inside the railings. Many regretted this and various lost perks. It had not been unknown for American tourists to part with good money when prompted by a veteran, speaking out of the side of his mouth, “That will be twenty dollars for the photo, sir. Just roll it up and stuff it down my rifle barrel … Thank you very much, sir. Anyone else? How about you, madam?”

  Underneath his greatcoat David wore his dark blue “number one dress tunic.” The trousers sport a broad red band and are worn outside “Wellingtons,” footwear that looks like cowboy boots minus the high Cuban heels. Since the tunic jacket is often too warm when worn beneath a greatcoat, many officers dispense with it except in very cold weather. One lieutenant was badly caught out when summoned into the royal presence and invited to make himself comfortable. He wore only a Snoopy T-shirt under his greatcoat, and Her Majesty was not amused.

  At 8 a.m. sharp David crossed from the palace to the “Birthday Cake,” as Guards officers describe the Victoria Memorial, and then across to the far side of the busy roundabout. Many officers, frightened of being run over, take the slower route to St. James’s Palace, by using the pedestrian crossing at the Buckingham Palace end of Constitution Hill, but David regarded this as a waste of time. He carried his sword menacingly free of its polished steel scabbard and, since his bearskin appeared to perch on his nose, obscuring his vision, the traffic invariably screeched to a standstill and let him pass.

  On arriving at St. James’s Palace, he acknowledged the shouldered rifles and salutes of the sentries and entered to eat a full cooked breakfast in sumptuous surroundings. In the officers’ sitting room on the first floor, he paused to look at the Times headlines. In a revenge raid following the murder of white farmers, Rhodesian commandos had penetrated deep into Mozambique. During the night, at midnight, 3 a.m., and 6 a.m., while his ensign, the young and rather green Second Lieutenant James Manningham-Buller, had inspected the St. James’s Palace Guard, he had inspected the Buckingham Palace Guard. Now he wrote up his Guard Report and signed for his mess bill.

  David paused in front of a large mirror inside the door of the officers’ guardroom and adjusted his calf-length, blue-gray greatcoat and the brass-link chin strap of his bearskin with its six-inch green and white plume. He emerged from the guardroom without bending. In his bearskin David was almost eight feet tall, but the doorway had been designed with just such problems in mind. He returned to Buckingham Palace, causing en route a motorcyclist to collide with a taxi.

  At 10:30 a.m. Major Charles Stephens, Captain of the Queen’s Guard, handed over to the New Guard to the camera-clicking delight of the tourists.

  As the majority of the New Guard marched off down the Mall with the Corps of Drums, the Old Guard, including David and his men, headed for the nearby Wellington Barracks to the tune of “Liberty Belle.” As well as being good marching music, this was also the signature tune of the television comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus. David had nobbled the Band Sergeant-Major, who substituted the correct final note with a huge, discordant fart from the tuba as in the Python version. This was enjoyed by the troops and tourists alike.

  David gave his orderly his uniform for cleaning back at the Guards Barracks in Caterham, south of London. Then, in slacks and a tweed jacket, he located his R-registration Porsche 911 Targa convertible and drove through near-empty streets to his flat in South Kensington.

  Letting himself in, he noticed a white, two-inch-square card with the rest of his mail. The card was blank. He felt a surge of anticipation, for this was no ordinary caller.

  David, a great believer in priorities, went into the kitchen, switched on the kettle and put hot water in the teapot. Then, without removing the brown paper band that circled its butt, he lit up a Montecristo Number 5 cigar. He smoked half a dozen a day and especially relished his first post-palace-duty puff.

  Spike Allen was standing by the bookshelf and greeted David with a creasing of the skin at the corners of his eyes. David disguised his pleasure. “You break in here on a Sunday morning when I am knackered by forty-eight hours of ensuring the Queen’s personal safety.” He gestured at the copy of the Times that lay beside a green cardboard file. “I had assumed you were in Mozambique leading the attack.”

  Spike grimaced. “I hope you’re not sardonic with Her Majesty. Sarcasm ill becomes an officer of the Welsh Guards.”

  David had been on a sniper’s course in West Germany when one of Spike’s talent-trawlers had spotted him and, a year later, Spike had made the approach while David was on a demolition and explosives co
urse with the Royal Engineers. The committee had specifically instructed Spike never to recruit from the Armed Forces and, in the case of ex-soldiers, no one who had ever served with the regular (22nd) Special Air Service Regiment. Spike had adhered rigidly to this rule until 1971, when a specialist job in Edinburgh had proved beyond the expertise of his two dozen operatives—his “Locals,” as he called them—in Britain. He had needed a man with up-to-date military contacts and skills.

  He managed on that occasion by himself but decided then and there to recruit a suitable person from Her Majesty’s Forces. Since he and he alone knew the identities of the founder, the committee members, and the Locals, and since the committee entrusted the work of running the Locals entirely to Spike, no one objected to the recruitment of an active soldier because no one except one or two of the other Locals knew about it. Ignorance was bliss, decided Spike, who was a realist.

  David had worked for the Feather Men for four years, and Spike had every cause to congratulate himself on his choice. He knew the details of Captain Mason’s file, as he knew those of every one of his Locals. Spike was married with two children, but the Locals were his extended family and Mason, Local 31, was a star performer. His file read:

  Born Oxford 8/13/51.

  Arrogant but fiercely loyal. Old-fashioned but quick, confident and decisive

  Eynsham Park, Witney, Oxon; 97a Onslow Square, South Kensington

  Eton. Mons Officer Cadet School. 1st Bn. Welsh Guards

  Skills/Abilities: Cross-country runner BAOR Championship ’71, ski, marksman

  Instructor—Sniper’s Course BAOR ’72

  Northern Ireland 1971–72

  O. C. IS/CRW weapons trials 1972/73

  Demolitions/Explosives courses ’72

  Best Regimental handgun shot ’73