by Chris Ryan
Jesus, he’s not even broken out in a sweat, Gardner realized.
The guy adopted a defensive stance, protecting his head. That still left the rest of his body exposed, and Gardner wanted to make him pay. He readied himself for a front kick to the guy’s stomach, lifting his knee straight forward. Mr Crowbar blocked the move by forming an ‘X’ across his torso.
But then he lowered his hands, and played into Gardner’s.
Gardner went for the jaw. One punch. That’s all the opportunity you’re going to get, he told himself.
An inch from his face, Mr Crowbar somehow blocked the punch with the inside of his left palm. Gardner was left KO’ing air.
As the guy fired off a torrent of blows, Gardner felt his body weakening. If you go down again, you won’t be getting up. He’s too strong. You need a weapon.
The room service tray. Yes, he remembered now. The knives and forks. The tray was a metre behind him. He dropped with the next punch. As Mr Crowbar wound up for a kick, he reached behind him. Grabbed the handle of something, couldn’t see what, and brought the tool forward – and plunged a serrated steak knife into the guy’s knee.
Don’t let up. Finish the job.
As pain jarred through the guy’s body, Gardner forced his head down and wrapped his left arm around the neck. He locked tight, crushing his opponent’s head in his armpit. Placing his right hand on his shoulder, Gardner grabbed the guy’s wrist with his left hand. Keeping his legs spaced apart, he leaned forward and forced the guy to topple over, with himself on top. Now he flattened his body out, distributing the weight as evenly as possible to create a suffocating press.
Mr Crowbar squirmed, pushing on Gardner’s shoulders, but the contortion of his body meant that struggling increased the pressure on his airway. Gardner had him pinned down in a classic figure-four chokehold. A woman’s arse fled the room, her wails carrying down the corridor.
‘Tell me your name,’ Gardner said.
‘Go fuck yourself.’
‘Who are you working for?’
‘Your mother’s a whore.’
‘Maybe she is, but I wasn’t asking you that.’ Gardner contracted his elbows. The guy gritted his teeth. His air passage dwindled to the thickness of a straw. ‘Talk.’
‘Suck your brother’s dick.’
‘I don’t have one.’
‘This conversation… is over.’
On the final word, Gardner suddenly felt himself rising. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Despite being fucked up and choked halfway to death, Mr Crowbar somehow had the strength to heave him off.
As Gardner flew through the air and hit the door, he saw the guy snatch the Glock. I’m fucked, he thought.
But Mr Crowbar glanced back down the corridor. Gardner could see along the corridor for about twenty metres. A security guard had come to check on the commotion and was shouting at Mr Crowbar to put his hands in the air. He might as well have told gravity to take the day off. Mr Crowbar pulled a five-inch combat knife out from his jacket and sank the blade into the guard’s groin. He stared dumbly down at his balls.
The lift rang its arrival just as Mr Crowbar fled down the stairwell. Gardner only had time to get up on one knee when the light of the doorway was blocked out by a scrum of men in uniform.
In an instant hands clamped his arms behind his back and slapped handcuffs on his wrists. Whoever did the cuffing fastened them extra tight. A pair of boots stood in front of him. Gardner was so weak he struggled to lift his head. He found himself eyeballing a portly guy with grey hair and a tan straight out of a home fitness catalogue. A badge on the breast of his immaculately ironed white shirt announced him as Lieutenant Colonel E. López. Doughy fingers rested on his utility belt. A forest of hair fluttered in his nostrils.
‘All right, easy on him,’ he said to the officer doing the cuffing. ‘This boy’s done giving grief. Look at the state of him.’
‘You should see the other guy,’ Gardner rasped.
‘I’m sure you’ve both got a story to tell. Been through the wars, my friend?’
‘A few of ’em.’
Two officers hoisted him to his feet, into the stationary police wagon.
9
0041 hours.
Time passed like kidney stones in Interrogation Room 3. López grilled Gardner in a voice that sounded as if he had loose gravel in his lungs. One thing was clear from the moment his deputy, Carlos Guerrero, cuffed Gardner to the metal table: they believed he was responsible for both corpses in room 39. López read out the accusations against him like a shopping list. Guerrero pulled faces and made not-so-subtle threats. Made Gardner almost miss the days when capture meant a hot date with crocodile clips and a piece of 2x4.
‘What were you doing at the King’s Hotel?’
‘I was there to protect a man called John Bald. He was the guy in the hotel room.’
‘Pull the other one. We’ve checked the hotel’s books. They’ve no record of anyone by that name staying in the hotel.’
‘He was there.’
‘We found her body, friend. You know who we’re talking about, don’t you?’
‘No comment.’
‘You headed to the apartment, where you found her sleeping with another man. You raped her, choked her, beat her to death and then slashed her wrists to make it look like a suicide. Then you killed her lover. That’s an evil thing to do, friend. Any jury in the world is going to send you to the prison up Windmill Road and tell us to throw away the key. You’ll be living on rats and maggoty rice for the rest of your days.’
‘No comment.’
Gardner had been batting away their questions for an hour or more when an officer barged in and breathlessly announced an urgent call. López and Guerrero left. The deputy flashed Gardner a smile, his small eyes disappearing into the fleshy folds of his face.
Thirty minutes passed. Neither man returned. Gardner could do nothing about his own predicament until he got a lawyer, so he tried to figure one or two things out.
Aside from the murders, the police had him on an assault charge and possession of a firearm. López sounded bullish about pressing charges. Gardner had his doubts. For starters, he hadn’t laid a finger on the Wren’s body. If she had been raped, DNA testing would also prove it wasn’t his semen. Gill’s death was harder to explain. His handiwork was all over that body.
He doubted the Firm would come riding to the rescue. Shit, he thought, they’re probably covering up their tracks at this very moment.
Gardner turned his attention to Mr Crowbar. He had seen that fighting style elsewhere. In the Regiment he’d received instructions in the way of the fist and the sweet science. Won medals in both taekwondo and boxing and studied other techniques to become a master of close combat. He loved its focus on individual skill in an age when the Yanks preferred to conquer entire countries from thousands of feet above.
So Gardner knew a fellow expert fighter when he saw one. And the guy at the King’s Hotel was one of the best he’d ever traded blows with.
The door was unlocked. Gardner looked at the table like it was the most interesting thing in the fucking world.
He heard the scrape of a chair opposite him, then:
‘Cheer up, old chap. It’s not every day a man kills someone in a busy hotel and gets to walk away scot-free.’
Gardner looked up.
He should have been relieved to see Land, taken it as a sign that the Firm were coming to his rescue. Instead, he was pissed off. A rage took hold of his body.
‘You lied to me.’
Land smiled at the floor. ‘I see. No “thank you” for pulling strings that didn’t need to be pulled. Just wild accusations. You can be quite an ungrateful little shit when you put your mind to it.’
‘You told me there were three men looking to rob John. I don’t remember you saying anything about a fourth guy.’
‘That’s because I didn’t know,’ said Land, brushing dirt off the shoulders of his cream jacket. ‘You don’t believe me?
Too bad. A lot of time and money have been pumped into this mission and it’s no secret that they’re two things in short supply in Whitehall. Present climate being what it is. Do you honestly think I’d undo all our hard work by selling you a pack of lies? Not to mention endangering both your life and John Bald’s. I’m sorry, but that’s not the way things work around here, my good man.’
Gardner looked Land in the eye.
‘Maybe that’s true. But don’t tell me you were in the dark about Killen and his mates doing jobs on the Circuit,’ he said. ‘I know how the Firm operates. You would have access to our files and have joined up the dots.’
‘I had to withhold certain information from you. Who knows how you might have reacted if you’d been aware of their identities? That was a risk I couldn’t afford to take.’ Land frowned at his shoes. ‘Besides, I thought it might be to your advantage that you chaps had a bit of previous. Better the devil you know, and all that.’
‘The next time you decide to withhold something from me, your face goes through the wall.’
‘God, you’re infuriating. I had to make a call. Whether you think it was right or wrong is frankly beside the point. Don’t get all hung up about it.’
‘Your bad call almost got me killed,’ Gardner said calmly. ‘Matter of fact, considering I’m sitting here on murder raps and with a set of broken ribs, I think I’m handling it pretty well.’
Land stood up, massaged his back.
‘Bloody uncomfortable chairs.’
‘They think I killed girl. I wasted that bag of shit Gill, but the Wren was dead by the time I got there. Reckon John filled her in to cover his tracks.’
‘Yes, well. We didn’t see that coming. But the good news is this. I spoke to my boss, he spoke to his boss, and someone very high up had a quiet word in the Governor’s ear. He’s ordered the police to drop all charges. Much to Lieutenant Colonel López’s dismay, I hasten to add. Probably a good idea not to bump into him on the way out.’
‘And the Wren?’
‘Recorded as suicide,’ Land said, nodding sagely.
‘I left Stone and Killen at the villa.’
Land stared through the small, wire-mesh-covered window in the door. ‘We already had our man down there. No luck. We think your two friends fled across the border to La Concepción sometime in the last hour.’ He rapped his knuckles on the window.
‘The guy at the hotel,’ Gardner said, closing his eyes, searching his memory for something. ‘He knew Krav Maga.’
‘Say what?’ Land asked, distracted.
‘It means “close-combat”. Krav Maga was a fighting technique developed by the Israelis for their Special Forces. Nowadays they teach it to the Regiment. I’m saying he must have a background in the military.’
‘We can’t locate him,’ Land said. ‘But we did pull his image from the security tapes and cross-reference with our database. I’m afraid we drew a virtual blank. His name is Shai Golan. He was born in Haifa. It appears his father was an entrepreneur who made his fortune in the construction business. Worked closely with the IDF, I’m told. Apart from that, our intel on this chap is thinner than Chinese tea.’
‘So he could still be out there?’
‘Don’t worry. Every police officer on the Rock is tracking him down. We’ll soon know all about him.’ The door opened. Guerrero entered and unlocked the braces, scowling like he had a mouthful of cow shit. Gardner winked a ‘fuck you’ at him as he followed Land out of the station.
‘What about John?’ he asked as they walked down the road. Victorian street lights were scattered along the coastline like landing beacons for the coming dawn.
‘Let’s just say you owe him. If Bald wasn’t pressing ahead with his mission, it would’ve been rather hard for me to spring you.’
‘John’s a big boy. He once defended an OP against a hundred Taliban for eight hours. You’ve got to have brass balls to survive those kinds of odds.’
Land lit a cancer stick. ‘Or maybe he’s just keen on the money?’
‘The John I knew, money never came into it.’
‘“Knew” being the operative word, I suppose. You’ve seen what he did to that girl?’
Land checked a message on his phone. ‘The frigate’s due to sail in a couple of hours. Minus one Wren. I’ve put a tail on Bald while he plots his next move. You’d better hurry.’
Gardner shook his head. ‘Forget it, mate.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Land said, the cigarette limp on his lips.
‘I trusted you and nearly paid with my life. I’m not playing your game any longer. If the Firm want to sort this one out, they can take all the risks themselves. Far as I’m concerned, you can take your mission and shove it up your arse.’
‘How very kind. But if you walk away now, I’m warning you. This is British territory, Joseph James Gardner. I’m an agent acting for Her Majesty’s best interests. Things can happen. People can go missing.’
‘Fucking try it.’
He gave Land his back and paced off towards the Charlatan.
‘No one quits on the Firm.’
Gardner walked on. In a few hours the sun would be up.
New day, new life, he told himself.
10
0132 hours.
I should have killed him when I had the chance. Golan berated himself as he hobbled over a patch of ground on the Upper Rock. A rusting artillery unit was fixed to a concrete platform a hundred metres away, covered by a chicken-wire fence to make it hard for vandals. He was nearly there.
He stopped to catch his breath. His temple pounded. He lifted a hand to his head. A sticky mixture, red and black, spread over his palm.
Sirens screamed in the distance. Gibraltar Defence Police, turning the Rock upside down in the hunt for him. Going back to the Bristol Hotel was out of the question. They’d find the laptop, of course. Golan could do nothing about that. But he could stop them from discovering the cameras.
The leg wound caused him the greater difficulty. He’d not had time to stop and properly examine it, but ever since that British shit plunged the steak knife into his knee, mobility in his leg had been severely constricted. Maybe you’ve ruptured your quadriceps tendon? he thought. He tried to flex it. The patella popped.
You really ought to have killed him in the corridor.
He stumbled ten metres further, and came to the spot. There he found the thermal-imaging camera exactly as he’d left it, fixed atop the cleft tree trunk. Its reflective eye gazed past him towards the dockyard. He yanked the camera off the mount and pulled the remote network card out of the back. Did the same to the second camera. Flies buzzed around the dead macaque. He smashed the camera lenses and chucked the remains into the woodland. The network cards he buried, careful to cover over the coffee-coloured undersoil.
Job done. No one would ever make the link between the cameras and his presence here.
Golan was running on empty. He had to rest, if only for a minute. He closed his eyes settled his breathing into a slow, hypnotic pattern. Felt his blood surge with fresh oxygen. Remembered his training. The past is past. Concern yourself with the present.
OK. Tend to your injury. Then figure out what to do about John Bald.
He perched himself on the tree stump and rolled up his left trouser leg to the knee. Tricky: the blood was like warm glue, thick and sticky. The knife wound was three inches long and an inch wide. White pus seeped out of the hole, smelling of rotten fish.
Lacking water to clean the wound, Golan did the next best thing: he pissed on it. He didn’t bother to suture the wound, despite its rank smell. Better to let the pus drain away naturally.
He tore off the lower parts of his shirt sleeves and used the cotton material as a dressing. He wrapped it loosely around his knee, giving the wound plenty of air. Despite the basic first aid, Golan felt his temperature rising. Knew that if he didn’t get to a doctor soon, the injury might turn gangrenous.
But I still have the gun, he reminded himself, reachin
g for the Glock inside his jacket. A gift from God – and a message. Don’t make the same mistake twice.
As a teenager and young man, his ways of killing had become ever more adventurous. He thrived on the diversity of death.
Once he’d read about how bamboo grew at a rapid rate and reached heights of several metres. So he nurtured a patch of young bamboo plants in a secluded forest. There he tied a man flat to the ground using stakes, having first sliced off the tops of the bamboo shoots, leaving the sharp ends piercing his flesh. When he returned several days later, the tips had speared his victim right through the chest, neck and arms.
Later Golan’s father discovered his secret. He sought the advice of powerful friends, the kind who could keep a secret. He told them his son had a special skill – one that few people had – and wondered whether such a rare talent was in demand. The word came back: we always need such men.
Golan plugged a fresh chip into his BlackBerry. Dialled the number.
‘You messed up,’ the man said.
‘I had things under control, and then—’ He was too angry with himself to go on.
‘Forget it.’
His forehead throbbed a little less. ‘Is the target—?’
‘Alive? Yes. We’ve a satellite fix on him now.’
‘Then the mission is not a failure.’ Golan’s heart jumped ahead of him. He had never failed before.
‘Not yet,’ the man said, letting two words do the work of ten.
‘Just tell me what I have to do.’
‘You don’t have long. He’s making a break for it.’ The man paused. ‘Hurry.’
11
0158 hours.
Gardner walked back to the Charlatan and showered. He thought about his next move. His mind was made up: Land and MI6 could go fuck themselves. There were thousands of drug smugglers higher up the food chain than Bald. Gardner had spent fifteen years doing the dirty work for suits, and he had nothing to show for it except a lump of carbon-fibre where his hand was supposed to be. If the Firm wanted to nail John Bald, fine. They were welcome to him. But they’d have to do it without using Gardner as cannon fodder.
