Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men)

by Ranulph Fiennes

  Davies had determined to celebrate before returning to Cardiff. He had taken a room at the most expensive-looking hotel in the center of Hereford, smartened himself up in gear that he considered decidedly trendy, and driven to a local jeweler’s. Then he had picked up a bored forty-year-old housewife in a singles bar and taken her to the Crystal Rooms disco, where they pretended they were back in the late sixties.

  At 6 p.m. Hallett reserved two single rooms at the Green Dragon under false names. He and Wally booked in at 7:30, had supper, then split up. Hallett remained reading magazines within sight of Reception and Wally retired to his room.

  The woman looked pretty good by candlelight. Only dedicated aerobics, Davies decided, could keep her in the shape that so provocatively beckoned from her tight teenage jeans and open-necked, frilly white shirt.

  “Getting quite randy, aren’t we,” she cooed as a Johnny Mathis ballad ended. They left the disco and, in his car, he gave her the pearl earrings just to make sure. Her left hand confirmed his expectations and he drove her back to the Green Dragon.

  Davies and the woman arrived back at the hotel soon after 10 p.m.

  “Thank you very much, sir.” The receptionist handed him his key and pocketed the ten-pound note. She made no comment, then or later, about Davies’s companion. Davies had prepaid for his room, as was his custom.

  Hallett recognized Davies immediately and noted the number of his room. The woman was a complication but Hallett’s mind was made up.

  Davies watched the woman undress with the mirror behind her. The champagne he had ordered that afternoon was ostentatiously expensive. She giggled as the cork eased silently free and he touched her glass against her nipple. They entwined arms as they toasted the night ahead of them. “To your imagination,” Davies grinned, and let her undress him.

  “How will we get in?” Wally asked. “Credit card?”

  “Not with a modern hotel door, boyo.”

  “But the Green Dragon’s nine hundred years old.”

  “So it is, so it is. But the door locks have changed with the times. Trusthouse Forte will have seen to that.”

  Hallett took a ring of tools from his travel bag and silently opened the locked door of Wally’s room from the outside.

  “So long as the Welshman does not apply the chain, there will be no problem, and I think he will have other matters on his mind just now.”

  “Where did you learn how to use those things?” Wally asked.

  Hallett replied by placing one finger along the side of his boxer’s nose. From his travel bag he now withdrew a coil of thin wire, a simple poacher’s snare, and placed it in the chest pocket of his windcheater. He again phoned Spike and this time made contact.

  When he replaced the phone he told Wally, “We are to go ahead but, I quote, ‘do him no harm.’ If we succeed we are to park your van by the Upleadon crossroads, east of Newent, where a Y-registration Volvo will collect our cargo.”

  While Hallett held the attention of the receptionist, Wally took their bags out to his Bedford, an old van that had seen better days. Wally returned and asked Hallett, in front of the receptionist, where his colleague was. “Must be upstairs still, the idle devil. Never mind, we’ll go and get him. Pinch a drink on his room bill, then bring him down.”

  They took the stairs to the second floor.

  The door responded to Hallett’s practiced technique and the security chain was not in place. The bedside light was on but the bed was empty. There were unmistakable sounds from the far side of the room. The thick carpet ensured that their approach was noiseless, and Hallett elongated the rabbit snare’s loop to fit over Davies’s head.

  The woman’s eyes were closed and her mouth open. Her legs were clasped around Davies’s back as they rocked back and forth. Hallett changed his mind and, adjusting the size of the wire loop, bent down and pulled it tight around Davies’s scrotum. The effect was immediate. Davies swore and withdrew from the woman. Further movement was strictly limited since Hallett kept the wire taut.

  “Try to be clever and my friend will drill your stomach with .44 caliber lead.” Davies tugged ineffectively at the snare. “But only after I have castrated you.” Wally, taking the hint, bulked out his jacket pocket with his right hand.

  Hallett gave the naked woman a friendly smile and nodded toward the bed. She eased away from under Davies and, following Hallett’s instructions, slit the rear seam of Davies’s trousers from crotch to waistband with Wally’s penknife.

  “Get up and get dressed,” Hallett bade the Welshman, “No, not the pants. My friend will take them.”

  With difficulty, and wincing from the pain in his testicles, Davies put on his trousers, holding them in place with one hand. Then his shirt, jacket and raincoat. Finally his socks and shoes, an especially painful process.

  “You are a lucky girl,” Hallett told the woman. “This man has already cut the throats of two ladies. You will stay here and speak to nobody. Tomorrow morning you will leave as though nothing has happened. No further harm will come to you if you do exactly as I say. Understand?”

  The woman cowered on the bed, clutching her breasts. She nodded vehemently. “Thank you, thank you. I promise.” Hallett believed her but he tore the phone cable from its wall plug before they left.

  Wally moved down the stairs beside Davies. Hallett stayed a step behind them, keeping taut the thin wire that disappeared into the rear vent of Davies’s raincoat. As the three men passed the receptionist, Wally handed in his and Hallett’s keys. “Back in a couple of hours,” he promised.

  From the Bedford van, Wally produced a ball of orange twine with which he lashed the Welshman’s thumbs and wrists together behind his back. The free end of the snare was then fastened to the wrist knot. Both men hauled Davies into the rear of the van and laid him facedown among the garden tools and other odds and ends that Wally kept there.

  They drove down Victoria Street and crossed the Wye by Greyfriars Bridge, heading south for the A49. Hallett turned to look back through the mesh of the dog grille between the driver’s compartment and the rear of the van.

  “You killed Mac, didn’t you? And the others. You bastard! Who are you? Who pays you? My God, I hope you live to regret everything you’ve done.”

  Davies squirmed some inches to the left and positioned his wrists against the blade of Wally’s trenching shovel. Quietly he applied pressure in a seesaw motion until the twine was cut and his arms were free.

  He waited for a steeply descending stretch of the road. Up ahead he saw approaching car lights and lurched for the rear doors of the van. Finding no inner handle, he kicked out with all his might at the central catch and, as Wally brought the van to a skidding halt, the right-hand rear door burst open and Davies rolled out into the road. His concentration was focused on the oncoming cars, to flag them down and, probably, plead abduction by thugs. He did not see the juggernaut that sped downhill behind them until it was too late.

  The driver, tired and caught unawares by Wally’s sudden halt, had decided his best answer was speed, to overtake the van and return to his side of the road before the arrival of the oncoming cars. From his point of view a sensible decision, but by the time he saw Davies, his momentum was unstoppable. The nearside corner of the lorry’s bumper struck Davies and catapulted his body to the side of the road. The driver narrowly avoided colliding with the approaching traffic and thundered on his way without pausing.

  The lorry’s lights must have blinded the approaching car drivers so that none witnessed Davies’s death. At any rate no one stopped.

  “Quick.” Hallett did not hesitate. “Get him.” They picked up the limp and shattered body. As they bundled it into the back of the van, the driver of a car coming up fast behind them from the north with dipped headlights flicked on full beam and illuminated Hallett, Wally and the body. As he flashed by, the driver applied his horn in an angry peal.

  “Did he see us?” Wally asked.

  “Maybe,” said Hallett. “We will have to
assume that he did. He may have a car phone. We must get off this road as soon as we can.”

  By a circuitous route they reached the agreed rendezvous. The Volvo driver, to whom Hallett handed his report, hastily updated, agreed to take Wally straight back to his home.

  “If the police visit you,” Hallett instructed Wally, “simply say your van has been stolen. If nothing happens, I will tell you in a week or so where I have left it. Thanks for your help.”

  They placed Davies’s body in the back of the Volvo. Hallett assumed Spike would know what to do with it. He drove Wally’s van to a free car park in Ross and then hitched a lift back to his car.

  Hallett telephoned Spike from home and was thanked in a noncommittal tone. He had no way of imagining the uproar that would be caused by Davies’s death, since he, like all the Locals, knew nothing of the workings of the committee, nor the identities of the members.

  43

  The meeting was held in the Wandsworth home of Bob Mantell. There was a full house despite the short notice.

  Colonel Macpherson arrived early. He was expecting big trouble, and had seen it coming from the moment Spike had called with the news. He was angry with Spike, yet without admitting it openly, sympathetic to the thought processes that had led Spike into acting as he had, without authority.

  There was nothing that could be done now about Mac except to add his name to the list of those the Feather Men had failed to protect. At least Spike had tried: Macpherson knew the committee would have refused any request Spike might have made for an authorized Mac-watch. Nevertheless, Spike had unintentionally caused what Macpherson recognized to be conditions ripe for a showdown.

  Spike had assured Macpherson that there was no longer any traceable evidence that the Welshman was dead, by whatever cause, but even so Macpherson had instructed him to send a full report on the accident to their in-house solicitor and to be ready for police inquiries at any time. Hallett and Wally were told to make no comment but to contact the solicitor at once if they received a visit from the police.

  Tommy Macpherson sighed. If only the founder had been well enough to attend the meeting and make his presence felt there might yet be a sensible outcome. As it was, Bletchley would undoubtedly blow a gasket and do something foolish.

  The committee members were unusually silent as they awaited the start of the proceedings. Jane completed her vacuum-flask routine to a roll call of “thank yous,” and Bletchley, whose personal hygiene and mannerisms had deteriorated so much that the committee members no longer doubted that he was seriously ill, received his in an unbreakable mug. Unsubstantiated hints that he had some sexually transmitted disease were circulating, but when August Graves had openly asked him what was wrong following a particularly alarming attack of leg jerking and impaired speech, he had merely responded, “Nothing’s wrong. Nothing at all.”

  Graves had approached Macpherson and most of the others individually and suggested that Bletchley be asked to resign. The majority view was that he should remain in the chair for as long as he wished. After all, his presence at meetings, although embarrassing owing to his impediments, did not in practice curtail their routine activities. So Bletchley had remained nominally at the helm alongside Macpherson. His hostility toward what he chose to see as “increasingly irregular behavior by certain elements of our movement” had grown to paranoiac proportions.

  “Colonel Macpherson”—Bletchley salivated as he spoke—“has called us together due to exceptional happenings.” He nodded curtly at Macpherson, who thanked him and without undue preamble broke the unwelcome news. He gave a resumé of the Dhofar-connection killings and explained why Spike had seen fit to act over the Mac affair without committee approval.

  Spike stared impassively at his lap under the hostile stares of the members. When Macpherson related the events leading to the death of Davies, there were shocked murmurs from the gray men and Panny, a strangulated grunt from Bletchley, and an angry snarl from Mantell. Jane, the don, and August Graves remained outwardly impassive.

  “I must stress,” said Macpherson, “that our people did not murder Davies. Indeed they did no physical damage whatsoever to his person. They did not in any way precipitate his death but they were there and they did witness the event without reporting it to the police. They further compounded the problem by disposing of the body.” He paused and then spoke slowly and clearly. “This may come to nothing. The police may never even learn of the event. Perhaps no motorist contacted them or did so without having taken the number of the Bedford van. Nonetheless, if our driver is traced and, via him, Spike and the committee, then all of us will have questions to answer.”

  He looked at all those present in turn. “I must also stress that the authorities may, through this incident, learn of our existence, and if they do, you will all, theoretically, be implicated as conspirators in events leading to a death; possibly presented as manslaughter. In order to prepare for the worst, I called you all together without delay to discuss and execute a suitable course of action.” He sat down.

  For a moment there was stunned silence, then Bletchley stood up, his mouth gaping like a goldfish. Almost immediately his balance gave and he sat down again. His words came hissing out in a rush.

  “Ruined. All these years. Ruined.” He glared at Spike. “How dare you act without my authority? Do you realize you have irreparably damaged the very soul of our movement? And what of our personal reputations? Our integrity? If this gets out we will be drummed out of our clubs, our directorships, the City … my God, it does not bear thinking about.”

  He looked around wildly, his gaze settling with intensity on Mantell and Jane. “There is but one course of action and we must take it firmly and at once. All the records, Jane, every file and every document, must be destroyed right away. Burned. At once. And we must disband as of now. It must be as though we never existed, should the police come searching.”

  He reached for his coffee and gulped at it greedily, spilling some down his shirt and over the table. For a while he could not talk and his head jerked sideways in a series of violent spasms. The condition slowly eased, although his shoulders continued to shake and beads of sweat trickled down his forehead. Nobody spoke.

  Again a burst of indignation and anger. “How dare you, Allen, follow your own private war, which this has undoubtedly become, and without reference to the committee? You have caused untold harm. If this escalates, even our founder’s name will be besmirched. Everything I, many of us, have built up over so many years, all torn down by your stupidity. There is but one course now and that is damage control. The committee must disappear from being and, I tell you now, I will personally consider what I shall do to protect my own reputation.”

  Drained, Bletchley slumped like a dying spider. Jane watched him with obvious concern but did nothing. Mantell filled the gap. “I can only agree with our chairman’s decision. Extremely sad though it makes me, any course other than disbandment would be to court extreme unpleasantness for each and every one of us. I suggest a show of hands.” There was a general nodding of heads and the matter was put to an open vote.

  Only Graves and Tommy abstained; the rest voted in favor of disbandment. Mantell telephoned the founder and relayed his vote, which, to the unspoken surprise of most people present, was in favor of Bletchley’s motion: immediate closure and destruction of all records. Existing business was to be curtailed as neatly and speedily as possible by Mantell working alongside Spike.

  The Feather Men, it appeared, ceased to exist as of Monday, December 14, 1987.

  The following morning Macpherson took a further step since, with no further action from the Feather Men, he feared the possibility of an unchecked continuation of the Dhofar-connection killings. During his 1983–84 tenancy of the office of High Sheriff of Greater London, he had made many police friends. Now he telephoned the most senior of them to ask for an immediate off-the-record meeting.

  Later that day he told his friend that certain people with whom he had se
rved in the past had uncovered the fact of, but not the motive behind, a series of murders of ex-Forces personnel. The most recent incident involved Mac in Hereford, and there was reason to believe a man thought to have been killed two days previously in a road accident on the A49 was one of the killers. He knew no more and could say no more, but could the four cases be reexamined?

  The police officer called Macpherson back three days later. There was no mention of any death on the A49. “We have looked at the files on the deaths that occurred in the United Kingdom and we cannot see any grounds for reopening them unless some new motive and/or evidence is produced.”

  Macpherson had expected this response, but felt he owed his action to those who had tried to protect the killers’ targets. He received a worried call from Jane the following week and as a result met up with her and Spike at the London office of the founder. Jane, torn between her loyalty to the movement as a whole and her personal devotion to Bletchley, owned up to an action she much regretted. At Bletchley’s insistence and in the state of shock that followed disbandment, she had taken Bletchley a single clutch of files before undertaking the soul-destroying business of burning all the records that she had lovingly prepared, collated and filed for so many years.

  Only when she had delivered the files had Bletchley made clear his reason for wanting them. He had made up his mind to write a book and reveal how his movement had been derailed by Macpherson and others, how even the founder himself had been hoodwinked into condoning the following of dangerous, unethical paths, how a magnificent and pure concept had been dragged into a mire of vigilantism, and how he, Bletchley, disassociated himself from the unfortunate results. He had appeared terrified lest his zealously nurtured reputation be blemished by a police investigation and the resultant publicity owing to the Davies fiasco or, should that not materialize, some similar future indiscretion.

  Jane had attempted to dissuade Bletchley from such a course but the man was delirious. He had refused to give Jane back the files.