Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men)

by Ranulph Fiennes

  From one of the bags, de Villiers took out Meier’s custom-made foldaway frame. He placed the diary on the table, ensuring that its open pages were kept flat by the strip of piano wire that stretched between the legs of the frame. Next he slotted the Nikon F2 camera into place, pointing down and some seventeen inches above the open diary. Meier had selected a slow, fine-grain film in conjunction with a flash attachment and manually set the optimum exposure. De Villiers pressed the plunger of the cable release and took a single photograph of each set of pages for the month of November. Six minutes later he was once again with Meier and the diary was back in Marman’s blazer pocket.

  29

  The surveillance period was the key to success. In Marman’s case, Davies had been patient and professional from the outset. After three weeks, still without a hit plan, he had given de Villiers his considered advice. Go for Marman’s diary, for he keeps it with him and uses it like a yuppy does a Filofax. From his forward planner pick a date when he is out of London and alone in his car, and set up a road accident.

  Davies also recommended that they fudge the warning film. Since the days of Kealy, video cameras had become widely available and video film easily edited. In Marman’s case it would be almost impossible to serve him notice of pending death without building a major embuggerance factor into any subsequent accident plan.

  The problem with Marman was his unpredictability and his almost obsessive love of human company. He was hardly ever alone. His girlfriend Julia was with him on and off much of the time after she finished her daily job at J&B Whiskey, his art student very often spent all day and night at 9 Blandfield Road, and a constant stream of friends, mostly ex-Army, kept dropping in to converse over stiff drinks.

  When Marman went out, there was absolutely no pattern to his movements. Job-hunting appeared to be the motive of some of his calls but more often he went instinctively to one of half a dozen pubs, such as the Antelope, where he knew his friends would be. He would join them on extended tours between various “in” watering holes, until a party was mentioned, whereupon the whole group would head off to change for dinner if applicable, or straight to the flat of the party-giver, not returning home until the early hours.

  Since the Clinic never reacted to mere happenstance, de Villiers had agreed with Davies and gone for the Marman diary.

  At a Tadnams safe house in Trebovir Road, a run-down basement next to a Slav-owned hotel, the photographed pages of Marman’s diary were studied in detail.

  “On Saturday he will spend the day wine-tasting at the Hurlingham Club,” Meier observed.

  “His girl works there, so she is likely to be with him,” said de Villiers dismissively.

  “But afterward,” Meier’s finger stabbed at photographs, “he goes for drinks with Poppo. Saturday night is always good for us. Who is this Poppo?”

  “Forget it.” De Villiers flicked to another sheet. “We have only three suitable events in the whole month and all are out of London. He will travel alone in his Citroën. We know that. We have the timing, and the routes will be obvious from any road map. I say we concentrate on these and forget his London life.”

  There was no further discussion of the diary entries and Meier began to look like a cat anticipating a bowl of cream.

  De Villiers pinned a map of England to the wall. “Marman will be making four specific journeys over a three-week period. Two in the west of the country, one to Suffolk and one to Rugby. The most detailed is down here,” he said, indicating the general area of Salisbury Plain. “We know exactly when Marman will be traveling between two known points … Meier,” he looked up at the Belgian, “what are your thoughts?”

  The response was immediate.

  “The ‘Boston brakes.’ It must be. It cannot fail yet nobody will ever suspect sabotage.”

  Davies was shaking his head. “It failed in Boston, boyo, so why not here?”

  “It did not fail,” Meier snapped. “You know that. Circumstances in Boston changed at the last minute so we abandoned my method. But everything was ready and would have worked. I rehearsed for two months on the old airstrip with the Tighe brothers in the stock cars. I could take over control at five hundred yards and by the end I had a hundred percent success. One hundred percent. That is not failure … boyo!”

  De Villiers raised his hand. “Okay, okay, keep your skin on, my friend. I have every faith in your brilliance, but what if we go ahead with your Boston brakes on his Salisbury journey and it does fail?”

  Meier nodded violently. “In the impossible event of failure there, I move the equipment to the car of another suitable third party and we catch up with him later here.” He indicated Suffolk. “But I tell you for sure: it cannot fail if I am on the controls.”

  De Villiers was pensive. “Certainly we need to ensure total lack of suspicion at this stage to avoid any interested party connecting Marman with Kealy and Milling. There can be no doubt that the Boston brakes is perfect from that point of view.”

  “If you are both dead set on it,” Davies sighed, “as I can see is the case, then we’d be better off down south. We know some of the coastal geography, at least.”

  The previous summer the Clinic had worked for a Paris-based agency that used them from time to time. De Villiers suspected that the client was a drug baron, controlling the Channel route into Britain from Deauville, and wanted a rival group wiped off the map without creating ripples. Although gang warfare was not exactly the Clinic’s field, the fee was good.

  Davies had pinpointed the target’s landing and handover spot as a desolate stretch of Pagham Harbor Nature Reserve to the north of Church Norton, in West Sussex. Having observed two previous handover ceremonies, he decided that a seaborne attack by Tadnams heavies in the narrow harbor, or a land attack as the French rendezvoused with their reception party, would both lead to major mayhem. To achieve a surprise attack, the Clinic had obtained through a Saudi purchasing agency a twelve-seater, forty mph hovercraft with a quiet engine and twenty inches of obstacle clearance. The Tadnams group had approached over mud flats, done away with the four-man French crew using silenced HK53 submachine guns, and towed their boat out to sea without reaction from the land-based reception party. They failed to locate the heroin but sank the trawler in forty feet of water before hovering back to the mainland.

  “Marman’s Wiltshire return journey is scheduled for the afternoon of Tuesday, November eleventh. Is ten days sufficient time for you, Meier?”

  “I will start collecting the gear together immediately with help from the agency. I can see no problem on that score. The difficulty will, of course, be finding a suitable proxy.”

  De Villiers did not hesitate. “Marman will be at home this evening, so Davies and I will pay him a visit with the video. You go ahead with a full proposal for Wiltshire on the eleventh that we can decide upon tomorrow.”

  Had Meier objected to the timetable, he would have done himself a favor, but his brilliance did not extend to seeing into the future.

  30

  The door of Marman’s house was ajar on the evening of Monday, November 3. Inside, oblivious to the draft, he was entertaining an old friend from his days in Dhofar. The two men occasionally met for a drink and to set the world to rights.

  “I could always tell he was a chancer,” Marman exclaimed, commenting on the recent resignation of Jeffrey Archer, deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, following accusations of involvement in a sex scandal. “That lewd smirk gives him away.”

  “You are quite wrong,” said his guest. “I have it on the best information that the woman was put up to it. A prime case of carefully planted disinformation. Once the smear has been disseminated, especially when the dirt is fairly credible, the victim will never live it down. Archer will be tarnished in the minds of the majority long after they have forgotten the actual details of the supposed scandal”—he knocked cigar ash onto the carpet—“and in this case the timing is excellent. The accusation was published on the twenty-sixth in the knowl
edge that Archer would reply the very next day … and what happens on the twenty-seventh … the Big Bang, of course, the City’s greatest event in decades. Not much space left in the daily rags for Archer’s repudiations at the time when he most needed to scream them far and wide.”

  Marman nodded. “His wife’s a good-looker. I could do more than sketch her if she gets fed up with hubby.”

  “Not bad, your latest offerings, Mike. Where did you do them?”

  The offerings in question were a handful of pencil and charcoal sketches of nudes, mostly reclining on a beach or emerging from the sea.

  “Ah yes, did I not tell you? Had an excellent sailing holiday in the Med. It helped me to sort myself out and think positively about life. Indeed a great time was had by all. That lass actually had her bikini on at the time I sketched her, sad to relate.”

  “You’re very good at it, you know.”

  “Stripping girls in my head, you mean … Thanks,” he laughed. “I do feel much better for the time away. I was beginning to be very down in the dumps after months of negative responses to my job-hunting. Makes you feel you’re over the hill, a has-been with no prospects but the dole.”

  He rose to fill their glasses. “To employment,” he said, and they toasted his prospects. “Next week I’ve a couple of good meetings lined up. You’ll remember Searby, Brook and Amoore, all good lads in Oman. Well, they’re helping out with likely leads.”

  “How’s Rose May these days?”

  “I see her most weekends when I collect the lads.” He was silent for a while, slowly turning his glass about. “I miss her, you know. Julia’s a very good friend, an angel, and Gillie, just up the road, is like a sister to me. But it’s not the same. The loneliness, the regrets, what could have been. Footloose and fancy-free sounds good but it’s not for me.”

  “I wouldn’t call you footloose. What about this place?”

  Marman’s rather lugubrious expression lightened. “Yes, it’s a lifesaver. That was dear Gillie, of course. It was her suggestion to get in on the property market, and my God she’s proved right. What with the hugely increased value of the investment and the rental income, it’s been a boon. But I still need a job. Two sons at Bousefield’s and I do want to do my best by them. Rose May’s a good mum but everyone needs a father.”

  Marman’s own father, a brave RAF pilot in his day, had emigrated to Australia in 1962 when Michael was seventeen and determined to become a cavalry officer. When his family had departed, Michael stayed with his grandparents in Kingston. A quarter of a century later, apart from one brother in the RAF, he seldom saw his family. The 9th/12th Lancers had given him the best years of his life. They had been his home but now he was on his own, a fish out of water. Never mind. He was a fighter. He would start a new life …

  Marman realized he was in danger of appearing morbid. Boring hosts and party-poopers were anathema to him. He changed the subject to that of mutual friends and was soon back to his normal, cheery form.

  There was a heavy knocking at the door and Marman’s friend rose to depart. “I’d better be going, Mike, or Monique will be wondering where I am. I’ll probably drop in for a dram next week sometime.”

  At the door he was confronted by two plainclothes police officers. One, holding an identity badge, addressed him with obvious deference.

  “Mr. Marman, sir, could we trouble you briefly?” He introduced himself and his colleague.

  “No. I am just leaving. This is Mike Marman. Been up to some naughtiness, has he?”

  He left and Marman ushered in the unexpected visitors. They accepted the offer of tea and while Marman fixed the kettle they sat down so that Davies was able to correctly position the briefcase that concealed a Sony video camera with a wide-angle lens.

  Marman, they suggested, had, at 6:40 p.m. on Thursday, October 30, been in a brawl outside the Antelope public house, 22 Eaton Terrace, which had upset members of the public. His own car had been reported by two bystanders as having fled the scene on the arrival of the police. Marman vehemently denied any involvement in the fracas.

  David Mason was annoyed. He prided himself on his memory for faces yet he could not place the policemen at Marman’s house. The fawn Range Rover, a manual 1985 model, sped up the M40 and A40 to Oxford and then Eynsham, as Mason niggled away at the recesses of his mind, attempting to match the two faces to an associated event. Eventually, not far from home, it came to him in a rush and the Range Rover accelerated, gravel flying, as Mason realized the full implications of his blunder.

  Running into Scott’s House, he located the keys and let himself into the gun-room. Inside one of the inner document safes he located a green folder and withdrew a sheaf of photographs, the Sumail pictures of Milling’s killers that he had taken ten years earlier. There could be no mistaking the two men. The colleagues of Floppy Hat had called on Michael Marman that evening. They might conceivably still be there.

  Mason telephoned at once and was greatly relieved when Marman answered. “No. They have gone. They were only here for twenty minutes. Something to do with a street fight at the Antelope. Thought I was involved but I soon put them right and they apologized. Why do you ask?”

  “Listen, Mike,” Mason said with deliberate intensity, for he knew Marman took most things in life with a pinch of salt, “those men were not policemen. They are dangerous and you should avoid them like the plague. I will be with you as soon as I can tomorrow to explain.”

  After a good deal of amused cajoling, Marman promised that he would at least lock his doors and windows that night, if only to humor Mason.

  Mason then called Spike Allen, who was in and agreed to contact the Feather Men immediately.

  31

  Colonel Tommy Macpherson believed that British citizens exposed, in the 1980s, as wartime Nazi killers and torturers should not receive a pardon merely because they had outwitted justice for forty years. He also believed that the hunt for the killers of Milling and Kealy should continue until they were caught. When Spike Allen called him, some nine years after Kealy’s death, to say his assassins were again at large, Macpherson’s immediate reaction was, “Excellent. This time they will not slip through the net.”

  He agreed to a committee meeting the next morning despite an unavoidable early date with the New Zealand billionaire Ron Brierley at the London flat of an Irish entrepreneur.

  Since the 1970s Macpherson’s life had become very full and, in four weeks’ time, he was due to submit to the Secretary of State for Defense a full report, called for by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, on employment and other problems affecting the efficiency of Britain’s Territorial Army and other volunteer reserves.

  Two years earlier, Macpherson, a senior nonexecutive director of the National Coal Board and the close confidant and adviser of Ian MacGregor, the NCB chairman, had performed two roles that were to prove critical in the defeat of the miners’ leader, Arthur Scargill. First, he persuaded Ian MacGregor to limit his appearances on television and to let the more subtle and down-to-earth Michael Eaton become the visible face of the NCB. Second, he urged the formation of British Coal Enterprises with the specific and enormous task of finding new work for the miners whom MacGregor had to render redundant.

  Additionally Macpherson had chaired the London Chamber of Commerce, the British National Chamber of Commerce, the CBI’s London and Southeastern branch, Birmid Qualcast, Webb-Brown International, and the Mallinson-Denny Group.

  Even when the founder of the Feather Men had initially checked out the young Tommy Macpherson in the early fifties, his record had been impressive. Educated at Fettes College (of which he was now governor) and Trinity College, Oxford, he was a First Open Classical Scholar, an Athletics Blue and Scottish International. He also played rugby and hockey for Oxford. Soon after the outbreak of war he joined the Scottish Commando from the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, became a POW in November 1941 but escaped late in 1943, and served in the Special Forces with the French and the Italian Resistance. He recei
ved the Military Cross with two Bars, the Légion d’Honneur, the Croix de Guerre, and various other honors.

  By the winter of 1986 Tommy Macpherson was as busy as he had ever been, but on the morning of Tuesday, November 4, he hurried through his meeting with Ron Brierley and Tony O’Reilly, the chairman of Heinz International, and arrived only minutes late for the committee meeting of the Feather Men. Bletchley was in the chair and Macpherson was shocked at the look of him. Thin and gaunt to the point of emaciation, he seemed to have lost interest in his appearance. His collar was awry and food stains were clearly evident on his poorly adjusted tie. A recent minor road accident, when his foot had applied pressure to his Audi’s accelerator instead of the brake, had left contusions and cuts on his forehead, eyebrows and nose. All in all he was a sorry sight, and Jane, seated close beside him with her notes, was obviously giving him the mother-hen treatment.

  Macpherson nodded his apologies to the chair and Spike Allen spoke. “The chairman allowed me to wait for your arrival, Colonel, before bringing up the specific matter which is the reason for today’s unscheduled meeting.”

  Macpherson nodded.

  The don smiled to himself. Spike had fought Bletchley hard to delay things for Macpherson’s benefit.

  Apart from Macpherson, nobody was aware of the reason for Spike’s sudden call. Their interest was aroused. The twins had long since retired, replaced by two fifty-year-olds with excellent Home Office connections. Both had been put forward by Mantell and seconded by Bletchley. August Graves had dubbed them the “little gray men.”

  “Most of you,” Spike’s voice was toneless, “will remember that in 1976 the committee sanctioned one of our Locals to follow a suspect to Arabia. The Local identified this man’s intended target but, unfortunately, the wrong target. An ex-Marine helicopter pilot was killed and the three Europeans involved were photographed but not identified.”