by Dan Latus
big cities were out.
‘Could we drive there?’
‘Yes,’ she said with a shrug. ‘It would take a long time, but it is possible, I think.’
‘How long?’
She frowned and did some mental arithmetic. ‘Three days, perhaps.’
Not too bad. And a lot safer than going through airports or ferry terminals. It was something to consider, if things got worse – and if he ever got that desperate.
Provided, of course, Schengen survived the waves of migrants and asylum seekers sweeping across the continent at the moment. The general re-introduction of border controls would create problems for him, and probably for Magda, too. At present, the re-installed fences and security procedures were confined to countries facing south, but that could change at any moment.
‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘Maybe we will go?’
He nodded.
Chapter 5
Fogarty got out of the car and stood gazing around for a few moments. The big, old farmhouse, built of Cotswold sandstone, looked wonderful in the gentle sunlight, and the view across the nearby meadows was even better. Open and, most importantly, boundary-free as far as the eye could see. A soft, warm breeze had the nearby beech trees rustling. He watched members of the resident colony of rooks squabbling and practising their aerobatics. Then his eyes turned to the man striding forward to meet him with outstretched arms: Mike Hendrik, his long-term chief of staff.
‘All right, Ed?’
Fogarty grinned. ‘Mike! How the hell are you?’
‘It’s me that should be asking that question, pal. I’m good. Never better. You?’
‘Not too bad. And glad to be here.’
‘The boys picked you up OK?’
Fogarty nodded. ‘No complaints.’
They shook hands and hugged one another.
Hendrik gestured at their surroundings. ‘It’s not much of a place, I’m afraid, but I thought it would do for now. We’ve got it on a twelve months lease, not that we’ll be staying that long.’
‘It’s perfect.’ Fogarty glanced around with an appreciative eye. ‘I can’t go home, anyway,’ he added with a grimace.
‘Unfortunately,’ Hendrik agreed. ‘Come on! Let me show you around. We won’t be here long, but you might as well know where things are – and what your money has bought. The journey OK, by the way?’
Fogarty nodded. ‘Fine. As usual, your arrangements were perfect, Mike. Worked like a well-tuned machine.’
‘Good to know.’
Hendrik steered him across the gravelled forecourt towards the open front door. ‘You need to get some rest now, relax and then—’
‘Fuck that! I ain’t doing no more relaxing.’ Fogarty scowled. ‘I’ve just spent a year or more doing that. Now I want some action. There’s a few accounts to be settled.’
‘Lunch first, though?’ Hendrik suggested with a grin.
Fogarty laughed and punched him playfully on the arm. ‘That’ll do for now!’
‘So what’s the plan?’ Fogarty asked over the lunch table.
‘I thought you might want to rest up here for a couple of days first, but it’s up to you, of course. Then we leave by boat from the river. Meet up with the yacht well offshore. Head around the coast, maybe down to the Med.’
‘Long term?’
Hendrik shrugged. ‘We need to talk about that.’
Fogarty nodded. ‘Makes sense. You’ve done well, getting everything organized like this.’
‘You knew you could count on me, Ed.’
‘Yeah.’ Fogarty sighed. ‘There were a few others I thought I could count on, as well. Like that bloody Nicci! More fool me.’
‘Nicci!’ Hendrik said, shaking his head. ‘Who would have thought it?’
‘Well, now it’s payback time. We’ll get to Nicci, but not straightaway. Let him stew a bit first.’
‘He’ll know you’re out.’
‘No doubt about that!’ Fogarty gave a mirthless laugh. ‘His new friends in the NCA – or SOCA, or whatever the hell it is now – will be sure to tell him, if he doesn’t know already.
But some of the others can come first. Save the best for last.
Who’s going to be first?’
‘The woman, I thought. Anna? She’s in London.’
‘Fine. Let’s start with her. She won’t have the money, though?’
‘No.’ Hendrik shook his head. ‘She was nowhere near the money. But she said her piece at the trial.’
Fogarty nodded. ‘I remember that. Bitch! She’ll do for starters.’
He reflected for a moment or two and then added, ‘I’m not letting the money go, though. We’ll find it, and get it back, whatever it takes.’
‘I thought you might say that. It’s going to be tough, after all this time, but I think you’re right.’
Hendrik frowned and added, ‘We need it. A lot of properties and other assets have been seized while you’ve been away. Bank accounts frozen, and so on.’
‘Not everything, though, surely?’
‘Oh, no! Not everything – not yet, anyway. But no doubt they’re still working on it.’
Fogarty grimaced.
‘Something else you need to consider, Ed, is that good plastic surgery that’s kept confidential doesn’t come cheap.’
‘Plastic surgery. I hate the idea of that,’ Fogarty said with a shudder.
‘Well, it may not be necessary. But if you want to live in this country, or most places in Europe, you should at least think about it.’
‘That what you’ve been doing – thinking about plastic surgery?’
‘Only some of the time!’ Hendrik said with a grin. ‘Myself, I’ll probably be all right, but you…’
‘I’m too well known,’ Fogarty finished for him.
‘That’s about the size of it.’
Fogarty pondered for a moment and then shook his head. ‘Fuck it! For now, at least. There’s too much to do for me to be worrying about that.’
‘Well, you’ll be safe enough short-term, if we take care, but not long-term. You said it yourself. You’re too well known. Where could you go? How could you live?’
The point was a good one. Fogarty accepted that. There were things to do here in the immediate future, but he couldn’t spend the rest of his life chasing down vendettas. There had to be more to look forward to than that.
‘So where do you suggest, Mike? Venezuela? The real bad boys always went to Argentina, didn’t they?’
Hendrik shook his head. ‘Venezuela’s gone down the tubes economically, and in every other way as well. Argentina isn’t much better. How about Cuba?’
‘Cuba?’
‘Things are starting to open up again there since Obama walked the walk, and talked to the Castros.’
Fogarty just stared at him.
Hendrik shrugged. ‘Coca Cola will be in there, and McDonald’s. All the usual corporate stuff. But so will the descendants of that financial guy the Mob had there back in the fifties. He laundered the money from the casinos for them – as well as the money from everywhere else.’
‘Yeah. You’re right,’ Fogarty said, squinting through the smoke from his cigarette. ‘Good accountant, Meyer. I wonder what happened to him.’
‘He died. He reached a ripe old age in comfort and security, and then he died. I read about him.’
‘Did he get to take his money with him?’
Hendrik grinned and shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. But the FBI never got it. Or him, either. He was good.’
Fogarty was silent for a few moments. Then he said speculatively, ‘Cuba, eh? I’ve never thought about that.’
‘Well, you should now. It’s the coming place. A lot of people and money from Florida will be headed that way. No reason we shouldn’t join them. I’m sure we’d find something to do there.’
Fogarty reached for the bottle of Rioja they had been enjoying over lunch and said, ‘Tell me more.’
Chapter 6
Ja
ke sat in the shadows next to the wall of the house and listened to the night. A breeze rustled the palm trees for a few moments and then died away again. An owl hooted mournfully. There was some rustling in the olive grove. His head turned sharply. Then he relaxed. He had no idea what was there, but the sound wasn’t the kind that was a potential threat to him.
For another twenty minutes he stayed there, still and listening. Then he swore softly and shook his head. This was no good. He’d had no peace of mind since hearing from Bob. Jumping at nothing. Waiting for somebody to appear, probably in the middle of the night. It was too much. He couldn’t go on like this. He had to do something. It made no sense to stay in the house, just waiting. He could do better than that.
There was Magda to consider, as well. This wasn’t her fight. He didn’t want to risk anything happening to her. Equally, he didn’t want her to look after. Looking after himself would be more than enough. He just hoped he could do it. In the old days he had always worked alone. He was good at that, or had been once, and it was what he preferred. It was how he wanted it to be now.
So he had told Magda to return to the room he knew she still kept in the town.
‘You are sending me away?’ she said, looking and sounding both hurt and incredulous.
‘It’s for the best,’ he told her. ‘This isn’t your fight.’
He winced as she turned her back on him and flounced out of the room.
For two days then he had the house to himself. On the first day, he busied himself making some preparations. They didn’t amount to a hell of a lot, but he did what he could. He had to assume someone would come for him, and he had to be ready.
The gun he had always favoured, the Glock pistol, he kept close. Passport and money went into a small emergency bag he kept handy for quick collection on the way out. He rehearsed alternative escape routes, ready for an attack from different directions. His main vehicle, the all-wheel drive Honda SUV, he parked in a long-stay parking area on the edge of town, keeping only the battered old Ford pickup nearby as a runaround.
He satisfied himself that when – not if! – he had to leave, he would be able to do it quickly. A moment’s notice would be all it would take. The first sign of trouble, and he would be gone.
On the third day he took the Ford truck and drove to meet Bob in Faro. It seemed sensible to wring what information he could out of the man who was supposed to be watching his back.
Fogarty might know he was in Portugal, even that he was in the Algarve, he reasoned as he drove towards Faro, but how could he possibly know where he lived? The Algarve was a big region. A couple of million people, at least, lived here. Unless Fogarty got lucky, they could spend the rest of their lives looking for him.
All he had to do was keep his head down, which was what he’d been doing for quite a while. All the same... He gave a crooked grin and shook his head. A lifetime was a long time to try to do that for.
Optimism always had been a problem, and sometimes a danger, he thought ruefully. It encouraged laziness and wishful thinking. Best to assume they really did know where he lived.
Fogarty and co would know where he lived the same way they knew he was in Portugal. Someone had told them. Or they had access to information about him that somebody somewhere held. That was more likely.
So what had happened? It wasn’t hard to think of an answer or two. One obvious possibility was Bob himself. Bob didn’t need to have deliberately betrayed him. All he had to have done was keep a record on a computer. Perhaps that had even been required of him.
Everything was on a computer somewhere these days. Nobody in the world kept paper files and records anymore. If information was held at all, it was kept on a computer. And computer files could be hacked, and were hacked, by somebody – every sodding day of the year!
Another possibility was the financial arrangements made for him. It was naïve to believe that all that was known of him was his bank account number and a sort code. A manager or auditor responsible for overseeing pension payments wouldn’t rest easy unless or until he knew more than that, and that sort of knowledge could be bought or forced from whoever possessed it.
So how Fogarty had discovered his whereabouts wasn’t really much of a mystery at all. He didn’t need to know the exact route they had followed. It was enough that Bob knew they had done it, and had told him so.
Thank you, Bob! Jake breathed. Forewarned was forearmed. You might just have saved my life.
Chapter 7
‘Who are they?’ Fogarty asked.
‘They’re from Tenerife. They’re good, I’m told.’
‘Brits?’
Hendrik shrugged. ‘They sound it, but who knows what anybody is these days? All I know is they come highly recommended.’
‘Who by?’
‘Rowlands.’
‘The time-share guy?’
‘That’s the one.’
Fogarty chuckled and shook his head. ‘Is he still in business?’
‘I imagine so. He sounded full of himself the other week when I bumped into him in Ronnie Scott’s.’
‘So age hath not withered him?’
‘Not much. Still a mean, little, nasty bastard.’
Fogarty chuckled some more and shook his head. ‘Ronnie Scott’s? I used to like that old place. What were you doing there? I didn’t know you liked jazz.’
‘I don’t. Can’t stand it, actually. I was looking for Rowlands. I’d been told he went there when he was in the UK.’
Fogarty nodded and opened the car window a couple of inches to let out some of the cigarette smoke.
‘I thought I might have given these things up when I was inside,’ he said ruefully, ‘but there’s not much else you can do in there. Except smoke, and think about things. Make promises to yourself about what you’re going to do to the people who let you down, and betrayed you, when you get out.’
‘No library?’
‘Library!’
Fogarty choked himself laughing.
‘A man could improve himself if he went to a library every day, you know, Ed.’
‘Too late for that. But you’re right. Maybe I could have been a brain surgeon.’
‘In some ways, you already are.’
Fogarty laughed. He liked that. He laughed again as he thought about it. It was true. He’d re-arranged a few brains over the years.
‘In some ways,’ Hendrik reflected, changing the subject, ‘I would rather we had our own specialists to take care of situations like this. Bringing in outsiders increases the risks.’
‘We don’t kill enough people,’ Fogarty pointed out, still amused. ‘Specialists would get bored, hanging around.’
‘True.’
‘Then what? Bored hitmen would be dangerous to have around the place. You would never know what they were going to do next to entertain themselves. Better this way. We’ve been through the pros and the cons on this before, haven’t we?’
‘Here she comes,’ Hendrik said, bringing the small talk to an end.
She was on foot, walking from the Tube station half a mile away, carrying a plastic bag from a supermarket. Fogarty focused on her and scowled. He remembered her, all right. Bitch! Her performance in the witness box had done him no good at all.
‘And that’s them,’ Hendrik said with satisfaction. ‘Right behind, in the white Citroen.’
Fogarty watched with growing interest. He was curious to see how good these two really were.
The Citroen pulled up outside the house next door. The young woman with long blonde hair walked past it without a glance, fumbling in her bag for a key.
The driver, a young guy with a razor-cut hairstyle, got out of the car and just stood there, peering back along the street, keeping watch. He held the door half open, ready to dive back inside.
The passenger, also young and with the same hairstyle, got out. He walked quickly along the pavement, following the woman. As she reached the gate at the foot of the steps leading up to her front door, he seemed to call
to her. Either that or she heard him coming. She stopped and turned round.
The passenger raised a pistol quickly and shot her. Twice, it looked like. A double-tap. She slumped to the pavement. The man closed in and fired twice more, making sure. When he straightened up and turned, the Citroen was already alongside him. He pulled the front passenger door open and folded himself inside easily. The car slid smoothly and quietly away. Within seconds it had turned a corner and was out of sight.
Hendrik started the engine of the van. He glanced at Fogarty. ‘Satisfied?’
Fogarty nodded. ‘Let’s go.’
As they drove, Hendrik said, ‘They looked pretty damn good to me. No fuss, no bother. Just in, and out. Smooth and fast. Job done.’
‘Yeah. What about if somebody shoots back, though? How good are they then?’
Hendrik smiled. ‘We’ll have to see about that. Why? Are you thinking someone might shoot back?’
‘Before we’re finished? Who knows? But I can’t believe they’ll all go down as easily as she did.’
‘Good point.’
Fogarty was thinking of the difference between a man with the only gun and the man who keeps his cool when everyone else has a gun as well. In his experience, it was a big difference. Still, he had to admit, what he had just seen was good. Mike had done well finding those two. They looked like a sharp and eager team.
‘We’ll do the next one ourselves,’ Fogarty said.
Hendrik glanced at him, surprised.
‘But keep the two young guys in reserve. And use them again. They’re good.’
‘Do it ourselves? What? You want to keep things tight?’
‘Yeah. Besides, this is personal, remember?’
Hendrik nodded. It was. Of course it was. All the same, it wasn’t what he had anticipated. ‘We’ll have to be careful,’ he pointed out, ‘if we’re going to get directly involved.’
Fogarty nodded. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said with a grim chuckle. ‘It’s not as if it will be the first time, is it?’
Hendrik didn’t bother replying to that.
