Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men)

by Ranulph Fiennes

  One cold autumn evening Tosh asked Davies up for a drink in his flat above the restaurant. Over a stiff whiskey Tosh poured out his woes. Life was a bastard. His health was giving out and the wife was being awkward, very awkward. Davies, having listened to local gossip, thought there might be good reason for such awkwardness but he said nothing. Tosh became maudlin. Without prompting from Davies, he began to reminisce about the Army. The finest days of his life. How he wished he was back. He mentioned many weird names in various parts of the world that meant nothing to Davies until the word Sherishitti dropped from heaven into his lap. He was ready for it. “That was where you attacked the cave system, wasn’t it, Tosh?”

  Tosh was surprised. Did Davies know about Sherishitti?

  Davies laughed. “Your memory is going. You told me all about the event a month ago.” To prove it he reeled off all that he knew by heart from many readings of the Jeapes and Akehurst accounts of the action. “I think,” he ended, “that you said you were controlling the mortars on Hill 985.”

  “No, no, no,” Tosh exclaimed. “That was poor old Mac, the best mortarman in the British Army. I was with him”—he subconsciously felt for the old wound in his wrist—“and we were both hit by the same bullet. But he was the boss with the tube, not me.”

  “Why poor Mac? Did he die?”

  Tosh shook his head.

  “No, though sometimes I think he wishes that he had. His skull was damaged some weeks after Sherishitti and he’s never been the same since. A proud man, Mac, still keeps a job down, over at Sun Valley Poultry, however sick he’s feeling.”

  Tosh filled their glasses and they drank to Mac and other absent friends. “He comes in here from time to time. You’ve probably seen him.” Tosh reached for a black book entitled This Is the SAS, by Tony Geraghty, and thumbed through it. “That’s Mac.” He indicated a photograph of Prince Charles inspecting four SAS soldiers back in 1970. “The fellow on the right with the sharp nose.” Tosh chuckled to himself, his mood beginning to lift as his domestic worries receded. “You should have seen old Mac with a mortar. He could aim by sheer instinct, ignoring the aiming marker, and I never saw him miss a target.”

  Tosh sighed and stood up. “Give either of us a mortar nowadays and we’d be hard-pressed to hit an advancing regiment. You ought to see poor Mac on his bike. Wobbles all over the place. Bloody lethal to himself and everyone else. Mind you some days he’s quite okay; it all depends on his pills. Up at the factory they say he gets so drowsy sometimes, the other lads have to cover up for him.”

  Davies told Tosh he was unlikely to call again for a while owing to pressure of work. That night he called de Villiers to come at once.

  Three days of observation outside Sun Valley Poultry revealed nine possible Macs but only one whose features tallied with Tosh’s photograph. Davies followed the man to Salisbury Avenue and, on the third day, noticed the cyclist’s problems with balance. Outside the factory that evening Davies heard the words, “See you tomorrow, Mac,” shouted by a colleague, and knew he had his man. The watch on the Salisbury Avenue house was maintained by the Tadnams people, allowing Davies to establish the movements of Mac, his wife, his daughter and all callers to the house.

  In the last week of November, soon after the arrival of de Villiers, a car with a doctor’s sign on the rear window parked outside Mac’s house and Davies followed the driver back to Sarum House surgery in Ethelburt Street. At 2 a.m. on Wednesday, December 2, de Villiers let himself quietly into the surgery, leaving no trace of entry. There was only one Mac with the correct address in Salisbury Avenue, and de Villiers photographed the relevant details on his medical file.

  “He has epilepsy,” he told Davies back in their car. “He may die in a few days or after many years.”

  “Are you saying we’d better hurry?” Davies asked.

  De Villiers ignored the question.

  “What’s the prognosis, to date?” continued Davies.

  “Easy. He spends many weekends at home and often alone. The best time is Saturday morning at 8:15 a.m. The wife will have gone to work and the daughter to ride her pony. The only other possibility is on his bicycle, but that is a definite second best as he usually travels at the busiest times of day.”

  De Villiers drove to London to collect the necessary equipment.

  Davies never returned to Chancers. Tosh Ash died eight months later. His body was found by the seaside in Spain. It seemed that he had taken his dog for a coastal walk and, when another dog attacked his, he died of a heart attack.

  40

  Early in December David Mason’s other commitments forced him to withdraw from the Salisbury Avenue watch. Darrell Hallett met him in a tearoom in Ross and took over the operation. Mason had already visited a number of hotels and bed and breakfast houses asking for help to trace the men in the Sumail photographs. There had been no response despite the paucity of out-of-season tourists and Mason’s two Mac-watchers had seen no sign of outside interest in the house or the man.

  Hallett was no longer selling Yorkie bars. After his twelve years of faithful service, his employers had put pressure on him and others to resign, as they wanted to reduce their sales force in South Wales. With free help from two ex-SAS officers, one a city barrister, Hallett had fought for his rights and, on March 28, 1985, at the Cardiff Industrial Tribunal, he had won £3,500 in an out-of-court settlement from Rowntree in respect of his claim of unfair dismissal. By dint of hard work, he had begun to build a new career with one of the major life-insurance groups and found it increasingly difficult to take time off for Spike. Wild horses, however, would not keep him from another chance of meeting up with the elusive Welshman.

  Mason explained the VHF pocket receiver, which would bleep should Mac press his ankle-buzzer—an action easily and unobtrusively carried out even at gunpoint.

  “How long does Spike want Mac covered?” Hallett asked.

  “For as long as the two of us are game.”

  “D’you realize this thing has been going on for nearly ten years and we’re still none the wiser as to the motives of the opposition?”

  Mason stubbed out his cigar, ignoring the glare of the elderly waitress, who instantly removed the evil-smelling ashtray. “You say ten years, Darrell, but we don’t know that we were in at the beginning. Milling may not have been their first target. Nor do we have any idea how many people they are after.”

  “Why do you give up valuable time for Spike?”

  Mason smiled. “I like the man. I believe there is a need for us. We harm nobody but characters who would, without us, continue to harm others. What about you?”

  “I’m Welsh,” Hallett mused. “I like to see fair play, and in this particular case, the boyo you followed to Muscat once gave me a very stiff neck.”

  “Charles Bronson and his Death Wish films have done us no big favor,” said Mason. “No member of the public would be seen dead condoning vigilantism and that is how our activities, if revealed, might be classified. The silent majority might approve but most would never admit it. Just listen to the shrill squeals directed at the very idea of Guardian Angels on the London Underground. Everyone knows there are not enough Transport Police to protect the passengers yet few approve of the thought of red-bereted patrols.”

  “I can think of nobody,” Hallett interrupted, “who would not support the Angels when saved from yobbos or rapists on a dark and lonely tube platform.”

  “Too right,” said Mason, “but the fools who denounce our existence do not stop to think of the lives we have saved and the fears we have eased.”

  “Ah well,” said Hallett, paying the bill, “I am proud to have worked with Spike and you and the others. To hell with the righteous bloody Pharisees. My conscience is clear and that’s what I have to live with.”

  “Are you happy with everything?” Mason asked, handing Hallett the receiver.

  Hallett smiled. “If they show their faces, they’ll regret it.”

  41

  Both men wore din
ner jackets but the soles of their patent-leather shoes were rubber. It was their custom, when walking in cities at night, to dress in the manner least likely to alert the suspicions of patroling policemen. People in smart dinner jackets are seldom involved in the pursuit of physical crimes. Davies carried a briefcase.

  At 3 a.m. de Villiers and Davies donned thin leather gloves and entered the shrub garden to the immediate right of Mac’s house. The previous night Davies had used a silenced .22 to shatter the lamp of an unwelcome streetlight in Salisbury Avenue.

  Once within the darkness of Mac’s rear garden, the two men placed triangles of black cloth over their necks. These covered the whiteness of their dress shirts and they moved like shadows into the gloom of an adjacent garden. It was possible that some busybody insomniac might have seen them enter the premises and called the police. If so, they could expect a visit during the next hour and would evade any front-and-rear police approach.

  After an hour, damp and cold, de Villiers deemed it safe and they entered Mac’s garage, which functioned only as a storage shed, to wait out the early hours.

  At 6:30, well before dawn, they slipped across the big open garden to the rear of the house. Both men were agile and Davies had previously checked all relevant details. Mac always kept his bedroom window wide open, appeared to sleep soundly, probably because of his medication, and apart from caged hamsters there were no animals or birds kept as pets. All windows were hinged, not sash-operated, with firm, ample outer sills.

  Standing on the windowsill of the dining room, de Villiers reached up and soundlessly raised himself up to and through Mac’s open window. Davies followed. Deep breathing indicated an undisturbed Mac, so both men entered the large double wardrobe at the far side of the bed, and settled down for a further wait.

  At 7:30 Pauline and Lucia rose, washed and ate breakfast. Pauline normally worked on Saturdays and, before leaving the house, would say goodbye to Mac, who had the weekends off. That morning, shortly before 8 o’clock, she popped her head around the landing door to his bedroom and saw that he was sleeping soundly. Closing the door quietly, she left for the bus stop, a stone’s throw from the house.

  “What about the daughter?” de Villiers whispered as the front door slammed shut.

  “She will have gone too. She has ballet or riding classes on Saturday mornings.”

  Silently they emerged from the wardrobe, keeping a wary eye on the sleeping Mac.

  The plan, starkly simple, had been conceived by Davies after studying Mac’s medical report and a good deal of literature on the topic of epilepsy. Cling film applied to mouth and nostrils would cause asphyxiation, and death would be attributed to a severe epileptic fit. Coroners, Davies knew, will seldom spend more time and energy than common sense dictates. If there is no reason to suspect foul play, why waste hours searching for signs of it? If the BBC World Service announcer Gyorgi Markov had not been Bulgarian or had not complained long and loud about an invisible umbrella jab in his leg, his coroner would never have initiated the blood tests that uncovered the rare toxin leaked into his bloodstream from an ampoule smaller than a pinhead.

  Everyone, including his doctor, knew that Mac’s condition was gradually worsening, and death by asphyxiation following a fit would surprise no one. Davies set up the video camera on its light alloy tripod at the side of Mac’s bed head and de Villiers silently mouthed his accusation from a prepared script. A gauze-filtered spotlight was affixed to the camera. The video showed the back of Mac’s head on his pillow and de Villiers facing him from the far side of his bed. Later they would synchronize de Villiers’s voice to his lip movements. The sheikh would receive enough visual evidence to satisfy him. He would not see Mac’s face during the accusation sequence, but this would be rectified by what followed.

  Davies moved the tripod in readiness for the next action. Mac’s duvet was awry and his legs uncovered, but he remained in deep sleep because of the side effects of his pills.

  “What the hell?” Davies hissed in alarm. He had spotted the buzzer strapped to Mac’s ankle.

  “Don’t worry,” de Villiers murmured, “many patients have them to summon aid if in distress.”

  “But why on his ankle?” Davies was definitely unhappy.

  “Whatever the reason, remove it,” de Villiers snapped.

  With everything ready for a hasty departure while the last dark vestiges of the winter dawn remained, Davies moved to the bed head and unpeeled the cling film. He nodded to de Villiers. In a single movement they straddled Mac’s body, de Villiers pinning down his legs and arms and Davies, with his knees over Mac’s shoulders, applying the cling film to his mouth and nostrils.

  The result was not as expected. Mac was not of a robust stature but he was tough and wiry. In normal circumstances he could never have unseated both men while starved of oxygen. But within seconds of the interruption to his rhythmic breathing, Mac’s limbs lashed out with superhuman power produced by a convulsive, myoclonic attack triggered by brain disturbance. De Villiers was thrown to the floor but Davies managed to retain his position. De Villiers heard noises downstairs. He pulled at Davies and both men retired to the cupboard.

  Lucia had decided to skip her ballet class. She was watching television in the sitting room when she heard a thud from her father’s bedroom. She knew at once that he had fallen over, probably in a fit, and ran up to help him.

  Lucia had dealt with Mac’s fits for many years but nothing like the violent convulsive attack that she saw her father was now suffering. Sensibly, she rushed straight downstairs to call for assistance from the neighbors.

  De Villiers and Davies heard Mac crash to the floor and Lucia leave the house. Every second counted. They climbed down to the lawn and reached the road several gardens away from Mac’s house. Within two minutes of Lucia’s sudden appearance, both men were well separated from the scene.

  An ambulance, summoned at once by the neighbors, arrived within minutes, but Mac was dead on arrival at the hospital. The cause of death was later to be confirmed by autopsy as asphyxia due to a fall and subsequent blockage of the air passage by the tongue.

  At 8:30 Pauline got off the bus close by Chelsea Girl in Maylord Orchards Shopping Precinct, to be met by two policemen. They had been called by radio as soon as the ambulance crew sent news of Mac’s death.

  Hallett’s watchman during the night of December 11 was a reliable man from Portsmouth who worked in a travel agency and had served some years before with D Squadron of the Territorial SAS. He remembered seeing two dinner-jacketed passersby during the small hours but had certainly not noticed them go into Mac’s garden. Nor had there been any other suspicious signs or sounds audible from his car until Lucia had burst from the front door and, soon afterward, the ambulance had arrived.

  The watchman, known to all but Spike as “Wally,” telephoned Hallett’s hotel but could not make contact. He kept trying.

  Hallett, unaware that the Tadnams watchers had withdrawn some days earlier on Davies’s orders, had grown impatient with his own passive waiting role and decided to put himself into the mind of the Welshman. How would he learn more about Mac? Hallett knew from Spike that Mac received occasional checkups from Professor Hitchcock, a neurosurgeon in Harley Street, but was cared for on a general basis locally. He deduced that Mac’s general practitioner, a Dr. Wylie of the local Sarum House surgery, might well have received a visit from the Welshman, posing in all probability in some suitable role. Hallett arrived early at the surgery to avoid queuing patients, only to find that the place was shut. He drove slowly back to Salisbury Avenue and found Wally’s car by the nearest phone booth.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Mac’s daughter rushed out of the house around 8:10 and, soon after, an ambulance came and they took Mac away. I was trying to call you.”

  Hallett took the phone and called the hospital, saying he was a relative. He put the phone down and turned to Wally.

  “He’s dead.” He shook his head in consternation. �
��If you saw no one enter the premises, he may well have died through natural causes connected with epilepsy.”

  He called Spike, who thanked him and asked for a full report that he would collect that evening. Hallett and Wally, after calling Mason and one other Local with the sad news, retired to their Ross hotel, Wally to catch up on his sleep, and Hallett to complete the report. That evening, soon after Spike had come and gone, a porter brought Hallett a message with a telephone number to call back.

  A woman with a Welsh accent replied. She had just come off duty at the Green Dragon Hotel in Hereford. He might remember contacting her two weeks previously. Hallett did not, but he knew Mason had shown the Sumail photographs at the Green Dragon and left their hotel contact number plus the promise of a healthy tip should anyone resembling the men in the photographs turn up at the Dragon.

  The woman, reassured by an eagerly affirmative response from Hallett, passed on the information that a man, very similar to the stockier of the three described, had booked a double room for the night just before she had gone off duty. Hallett took her address and promised her ten pounds for her trouble. Spike was en route and could not be contacted, but Hallett knew what to do. He went to wake Wally at once.

  42

  Davies felt unusually elated and relieved. A call from the Tadnams woman had confirmed that Mac was without question dead and there were no signs of undue police activity at his home indicating official suspicion of foul play. De Villiers had gently replaced the receiver, raised a hand to Davies’s shoulder and exclaimed, “You did well, very well indeed.” Unprecedented praise and it went with a rare if fleeting smile that quite unsettled Davies. “I will contact you as usual, when I leave Dubai,” had been de Villiers’s parting words.