by Jack Higgins
The second helicopter was lifting now. Soon, Chance would have a clear shot at it. But before he could take aim again, uniformed policemen leaped out of the car on the drive. They took cover behind the open car doors, aiming their handguns – at Jade and her father.
“Armed police officers! Put down your weapon and keep your hands where we can see them. You have five seconds to comply or we will fire. That was your only warning.”
“But the helicopter’s getting away!” Jade yelled back at them.
“I’m an armed officer with the Security Services, executing my duty,” Chance shouted.
“We’ll be executing you if you don’t drop the gun,” the policeman yelled back. “Hands on head – now! Or we fire.”
“I’m telling you—”
“Now!”
He dropped the gun and put his hands on his head. Jade sighed, and did the same. “Idiots.”
“They’re just doing their job,” Dad said. “Ardman called the local police and told them to send an armed response unit. They haven’t a clue what’s going on or who we really are.”
Behind the police cars, the helicopters disappeared into the night.
“I’m sorry,” Ardman said as he dismissed the policeman who had been standing guard over Jade and her father. Ardman produced a pocket knife and cut the plastic ties that secured Jade’s hands behind her back. Then he moved on to her dad.
“You’d think they could tell I was a schoolgirl,” Jade complained. “Have you found Rich yet? Is he all right?”
“We’ve searched the school from top to bottom. I’m sure there are places we’ve missed, but if Rich is there – we haven’t found him. I’m sorry.”
Jade looked away.
“And the Banker?” Dad asked.
“No sign of him either. As I say, there are still places to check. But if they were here and still… conscious…” Ardman shrugged. “Well, they’d have heard what’s going on – the sirens, officers shouting for them.”
“So where are they?” Jade demanded. “They can’t just have vanished.”
“They must have been on that first helicopter,” Dad said. His voice was strangely flat. “The Tiger has them. The Banker and Rich – he’s got them both.”
14
The noise was incredible. Rich found it impossible to get comfortable and had to keep shifting position, so he was glad no one would be able to hear him. It was not the best hiding place he could have picked. But there had not been a lot of choice.
He had heard the gunmen come into the room and listened to the muffled voice of the big bearded Scotsman. He’d heard the Scotsman’s delight at finding the Banker cowering behind the filing cabinet on the far side of the room, and prayed that they would stop searching now and just leave. Despite Mr Argent’s predicament, Rich had almost cried with relief that it was all over.
Then he had nearly cried out in surprise and frustration as his whole dark world shifted. He could hear the two gunmen lifting him swearing at the weight.
“What the hell’s he got in here?”
“Don’t know. But you heard Bannock – we take everything.”
There was some light through a tiny crack where the double doors of the low cupboard met, but not enough to see anything much. Rich was aware only of the motion as he was bounced down the stairs. Then he was lifted again and carried outside. The air was suddenly colder and the noise of the helicopters was louder.
“Oh, no,” he breathed. “Please, no.” If he banged on the inside of the cupboard would they let him go? But he’d seen what the gunmen and their leader – Bannock – were capable of. He even knew the man’s name. Probably they’d just shoot him.
But as he felt himself being lifted into the helicopter, Rich panicked in the claustrophobic darkness and hammered on the doors of the cupboard. Of course, no one could hear him above the engines. And only now did Rich realise that when the doors had clicked shut, there was no easy way to open them from inside.
When he felt the helicopter lifting, he knew it was no good. If they found him now, they’d either take him with them or they’d dump him out the door. In flight. Better to stay put, stay hidden and hope for a chance to escape. After all, it wasn’t all bad, he tried to convince himself – he was infiltrating the villains’ stronghold. Soon he would know where they were holding the Banker. Then all he needed to do was escape and get a message to Dad or Ardman. Yeah, right – that was all.
It was dark and the movement of the helicopter was making him feel distinctly ill. The only light was when he pressed the illumination button on the expensive watch that Ralph had given him in Venice – it seemed a life time ago.
And the only thing worse than being thrown out of a helicopter, Rich thought, would be throwing up inside a cramped cupboard in a helicopter. He swallowed hard and closed his eyes.
They called it ‘The Wagon’ and it looked just like a large black van. But the nondescript exterior gave no clue as to what was housed inside.
Jade looked round in astonishment. Down each side of the van was a workbench, and on each bench was a mass of equipment – computers, radar, headphones, and screens showing data feeds, CCTV footage, even the pictures from traffic cameras.
There was barely room to walk between the workbenches. Two men sat in small swivel chairs. They were constantly moving – turning and wheeling up and down to check equipment, read from screens, type rapidly on various keyboards. One had hair to his shoulders while the other had a military crewcut.
Ardman stood close to one of the men. He beckoned Jade and her father into the van.
“Sorry there isn’t much space. But then Alan and Pete here aren’t that keen on company, are you?”
“Slows us down,” the long-haired one said without looking up from the screen he was watching.
“Got a link to Fylingdales,” said Crewcut. “Patching it into the satellite images to double check.” He clapped his hands together and leaned back in his chair. “Got ’em,” he announced.
“Where are they headed, Pete?” Dad asked. He was having to stoop to avoid knocking his head on the roof of the van.
“Targets designated Bandit Zero One and Bandit Zero Two,” the man with long hair – Alan – said. “I’m passing their locator keys to the RAF. They have Tornadoes available.”
“Time to intercept eleven minutes,” Crewcut Pete announced. “Near enough. If they’re on their toes, and they usually are.”
“Intercept?” Jade looked at her dad. “They’re not going to shoot them down, are they?”
“They’ll escort them to the nearest RAF base,” Ardman told her. “Though we have to assume the men in the helicopters won’t like that.”
“Not a lot they can do about it,” Alan said. “We have radar locked on, and the bird’s giving us real-time infrared. We can even count the number of people on board if I can cancel out the engine flare.”
“We have Tornadoes in the air,” Pete announced. He turned a screen slightly and Jade could see three fighter planes streaking off a runway and rising rapidly into the night sky. The picture was a washed out greeny monochrome and she guessed that too was infrared. “Time to intercept, nine and a half minutes.”
“They’re changing course,” Alan said. “Turning north.”
On the screen in front of him tiny, pale helicopters were swivelling as they flew onwards. Then the screen flickered and the picture disappeared. Blackness.
“What’s happened?” Ardman demanded.
“Lost the feed.” Alan was frantically typing into the keyboard. “Satellite’s fine. I’m getting pinged back. It’s still there and still sending. The fault’s local.”
“You mean here in the van?” Jade asked.
“I mean London.” He sat back and sighed. “Diagnostics all check out. There’s no problem. Well, no technical problem.”
“Radar’s gone too,” Pete said. “Again, no technical fault. It’s a reroute. Priority cut-out. Looks like it’s your problem, Mr Ardman, not ours.”
“You’ve lost them?” Jade said.
“’Fraid so,” Pete replied. “RAF boys might get a local contact, but they’re flying blind. Whole system’s been whitewashed.”
“Whitewashed? What’s that mean?” Jade asked.
“This equipment does more than most people know,” Dad told her. “The satellites give us far more detailed and close-up information than we let on. If someone hacks into the system, it resets to the minimum anyone would expect, just until the hacker is purged from the network.”
“That way, anyone hacking in won’t see anything we don’t want them to,” Ardman explained.
“So, someone hacked in just as we were watching those helicopters?”
Pete laughed. “No, we’re the hackers.”
“What?”
“That’s what someone told the system,” Pete went on. “We’ve had our access key cancelled. Doesn’t only lock us out, but it ensures there’s no data being received at all. So we can’t just reaccess and watch a replay to see where they went. The satellite should be back online in about three minutes, but we’ll probably have lost them by then. Till we can get new access codes authorised we won’t be able to tell it where to look. And whoever cancelled our codes can probably keep us locked out for hours.”
“Someone with pretty high authority. Someone who didn’t want us to see where those helicopters went,” Ardman said. “The interesting question is, who?”
“The same person that tipped off the gunmen that I was on my way,” Dad said. “The only way they’d have known to pull out and evacuate was if someone told them their time was up.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” Ardman admitted.
“You mean like a traitor? A mole?” asked Jade.
“I was with Sir Lionel when I took your call,” Ardman told Dad. “He’s the minister with overall responsibility for my department,” he explained to Jade. “Apart from him, only a handful of people would have known you’d called. I alerted Goddard and his team at once; that broadens it to a dozen more… Not much help.”
“But if there’s a leak, possibly a traitor,” Dad said, “we have to play this very carefully indeed.”
“Tornadoes are breaking off,” Pete reported. “They failed to make contact. Those helicopters were turning north when we lost them. But they could have kept changing course to head anywhere. I’ve sent up some air-sea rescue to cover the east; the RAF are sweeping the north. We’ll get west and south covered as soon as we can. But I’m not hopeful.”
“I’ll work out the range,” Alan said. “See if we can put a boundary on their journey. Though they might pick up different transport en route.”
“Aren’t you missing the important point here?” Jade demanded. She couldn’t believe they were standing around discussing traitors and leaks without any apparent thought for what really mattered.
“And what’s that?” Ardman asked.
“We’ve lost them. We have no idea where those gunmen have gone. Or where they’ve taken the Banker and Rich.”
There was a bulldog clip holding a bundle of papers together. It had been digging into Rich’s leg for ages, but he finally managed to move enough to pull it off the papers. He examined it briefly in the light from his watch dial. It looked about the right width.
The wires that folded back from the clip itself just fitted between the cupboard doors. Rich twisted the clip, forcing the crack between the doors open – not much, just enough so he could see out. He had to twist awkwardly to get his eye close enough to the crack.
He could feel that the helicopter was descending. The change in the tone of the engine confirmed what he felt in the base of his stomach. The world bounced slightly as the helicopter landed. The sound of the engines faded and he could hear people talking, dogs barking, a heavy door sliding open. Rich hoped they didn’t just chuck the cupboard out, but braced himself in case.
The cupboard was lifted out. It was on little castors and was set down on the ground and dragged. It bounced and rattled, throwing Rich painfully from side to side. But he barely noticed. He was staring out through the crack in the doors. The world outside was illuminated by giant floodlights. It was no wonder the ground was so uneven, it was probably cobbles or stone slabs.
The cupboard turned as it was manoeuvred through a doorway. That gave Rich a final look back towards where the two helicopters were standing. He could see the frightened, pale Banker following – urged on roughly by the bearded Scotsman. And he could see that they had landed in the enormous inner courtyard of a massive medieval castle.
The Banker’s real name was Dominic Fendelmann, but he had not used it for years. He wondered what his headstone would say, or whether he would end up in an unmarked, unknown grave. Probably quite soon.
Any hope he had that Ardman and his people could trace the helicopters had ended when Bannock radioed to ask for a radar blackout. The gunmen seemed confident and optimistic.
Until after they landed and Bannock saw who got out of the two helicopters. “Where is Duncan?” he demanded.
“Haven’t seen him,” one of the gunmen said.
“Not in this chopper,” another said.
One of the gunmen had been shot in the leg and had to be carried inside, a tourniquet wrapped tight about his thigh. It made the Banker wonder how his daughter Eleri was – had she been badly wounded? It was a relief to find she was not on either of the helicopters. But did that mean… He hardly dared to think about it.
“Idiots!” Bannock proclaimed as he led the way inside the castle. “Let’s just hope Duncan is dead. Then at least he won’t be able to tell them anything.” Bannock led the Banker and the men carrying the filing cabinet and cupboard through a wide stone corridor. There were electric lights and the stone floor was covered with a deep, rich carpet.
They stopped at a huge, heavy wooden door. Bannock turned the large key in the lock and pushed the door open. It didn’t creak as the Banker had expected. And inside he could see a large, comfortably furnished room.
There was a sofa and an armchair. A mahogany desk. A large log fire burning in the grate beneath what looked like an Adam fireplace. There was no window, but soft light came from elegant gold-leafed wall lamps. A painting hung over the fireplace, a portrait of a beautiful young woman in Victorian dress. She was half smiling, as if mocking the Banker as he stepped into the room.
“You’ll be our guest for a while,” Bannock told him, leading the Banker inside. He pointed to where he wanted the cupboard and filing cabinet. “So make yourself at home. Enjoy it while you can. There’s a bedroom through there, with ensuite bathroom. If you want anything, ring the bell.” He pointed to a bell rope hanging down by the fireplace.
“What could I possibly want from you?”
Bannock smiled, but the humour did not reach his eyes. They were dead. “Food maybe. Some wine perhaps. To tell us the account numbers and access codes before the Tiger comes to ask for them in person. Because he will. And believe me, you will want to tell him.” Bannock turned to go. He paused in the doorway. “Just ring the bell when you’re ready to start talking.” The door slammed shut, and the key turned noisily in the lock.
The Banker had seen the castle illuminated by the floodlights as they landed. It was huge and forbidding. A massive stone-built fortress. Even if he got out of the room, the Banker realised, he was trapped inside an impregnable castle. And the worst of it was that he could not tell them what they wanted to know. For want of anything better to do, he walked round the room. Then he looked into the bedroom – almost as big as the main room and equally luxurious.
Back in the main room, the Banker opened each of the drawers of the filing cabinet in turn. They contained pupil records and old exam papers. Nothing remotely useful. The cupboard was full of old exercise books and answer sheets kept by his predecessor at the school. But the Banker unlocked the doors anyway. He swung them open, expecting no inspiration or surprises from inside.
Then he jumped back in shock.
/>
“Oh, er – hello,” Rich said, climbing out of the cupboard. He looked round, blinking in the light. “Can I use your bathroom?”
15
Jade insisted on returning to London with her dad and Ardman. Neither of them tried to talk her out of it. She and Dad went back to the cottage to collect overnight bags. They both knew they’d be staying in London until they got news of Rich.
Jade shoved clothes into a rucksack, not paying much attention to what she was grabbing. She changed quickly out of her school uniform and pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt. After a moment’s thought, she put on the necklace that Ralph had given her in Venice. A memory of recent adventures with Rich. Of being together. She tucked the delicate glass beads out of sight inside the sweatshirt collar.
Ardman gave them a lift. He drove efficiently and quickly, on the hands-free phone almost constantly while Jade and Dad sat in the back and talked quietly. It was after midnight now and the roads were quiet.
Jade told him what had happened, as well as she could remember. Anything might be a clue, Dad had told her – any tiny detail seen or words overheard.
As they reached the outskirts of London, Ardman leaned back and said loudly to them, “Apparently, we have a lead.”
“The helicopters?” Chance asked.
“No. One of the gunmen. Seems they left him behind. Unconscious. In a cupboard.” He glanced back, a wry smile on his face. “You know anything about that, Jade?”
Goddard was a tall thin man with a drooping moustache. “I put him in the holding cell,” he told Ardman. “But he’s a tough one. You won’t get anything out of him easily.”
“I’m sure we’ll manage.” Ardman was at his desk. Jade and Chance sat in armchairs nearby, all of them sipping hot coffee. It was a large office in a Regency building, and furnished in keeping with its age – apart from the computer screen and telephone on the desk. “Who knows he is here?” Ardman asked Goddard.
“Well, the local coppers know we took him. No one else, so far as I know. Apart from the medic who stitched him up. Oh and we’ve got a cover story out for the school.”
