Hard Knocks tcfs-3

by Zoe Sharp

  When the Major wound up his short speech by extending an offer to leave immediately to anyone who wanted it, for a moment there was a silence brimmed with shock. People shuffled uncomfortably in their seats, began making surreptitious eye contact with their neighbours. Desperate to leave, nevertheless nobody wanted to be the one whose nerve was first to break.

  Eventually, one of the cooks stood up, truculent as he unknotted his apron and dumped it firmly on his chair. His exit broke the surface tension. More people rose, students and staff alike, gathering momentum with mass. By the time the movement slowed, only a pathetically small group remained resolutely in their chairs.

  The big Welshman Craddock had stayed put, but he probably would have done the same if you’d told him nuclear war had just been declared. He just had that kind of placid nature. Michael Hofmann was another, his face blank as he rolled slowly through some inner thought process. Maybe the realisation of the danger he was in was just taking a long time to reach his brain. Romundstad was hunched forwards, looking poised for flight as though he might change his mind at any moment, but he stayed in his seat.

  There were two surprises. Declan Lloyd was one of them. He was lounging back in his chair putting on a good show of airy lack of concern, with only the jerky swinging of his casually crossed foot to call him a liar.

  The other unexpected volunteer was Ronnie. He was the sole member of the domestic staff who’d stood his ground. The Major’s gaze tracked slowly across everyone, showing neither approval nor disappointment at their decisions. He nodded once, briefly, to those who’d elected to stay.

  “Thank you,” he said with quiet dignity. Then he shifted his attention to the others, told them to pack their stuff and take one of the trucks into Einsbaden village. “Although you may like to consider a fallback position,” he warned, almost taking delight in trying to make them squirm. “One somewhat further away from the front line, as it were.”

  We who’d elected to stay sat and watched as they filed out. Mostly they didn’t look at us or, if they did, it was with a pitying disbelief. We were mad, their thoughts clearly said. We didn’t stand a hope in hell.

  Maybe they were right.

  The door closed behind the last of them, echoing slightly as if on an empty room.

  Gilby and the two instructors stepped down from the dais, coming to sit among us. The sudden breakdown in formality showed a nice common touch on his part. It gathered us to the cause.

  The Major needed all his communication skills once he started to outline the situation in more detail. He didn’t make it sound any better than it had done in broad strokes.

  “So, let me get this straight,” Declan said when he’d finished. “This Gregor Venko feller, who’s as nasty a piece of work as ever walked the earth, is coming here in—” his eyes swivelled to the clock on the wall high above the Major’s head, “—a little over eleven hours from now, expecting to exchange the young lady he’s kidnapped, for his son, who you’ve kidnapped?”

  “Yes,” said Gilby.

  “But now you don’t have the lad to exchange because young Jan, who’s turned out to be a darker horse than any of us would have given her credit for, has – for reasons all of her own – stolen him away?”

  “Yes,” Gilby said again.

  Declan threw his hands up and sat back in his chair. “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” he muttered. “We’re all fecked.”

  “Thank you for providing that succinct summary Mr Lloyd,” Gilby said tartly. “But what we need now is a plan of action.” He had the grace not to look Sean straight in the eye while he stole his words.

  “It would help if we knew who Jan was working for, no?” Romundstad put in, tugging at his moustache.

  “That we don’t know,” Gilby said. “If she is working for Venko then he probably already knows Ivan is loose and he has no reason to turn up tomorrow except for a revenge attack.”

  “Or he might not show at all.” It was Ronnie who spoke, looking absurdly hopeful. I wondered if he was already regretting his show of bravado.

  “That’s correct.” Sean nodded at him, encouraging. “But I would suggest we need to formulate a plan that isn’t based on the premise that Venko isn’t going to show. If he turns up tomorrow, with Heidi, we need to know how to try and retrieve the situation. Preferably without getting anyone killed.”

  Todd stood up. “We need to get Venko’s men into a controlled location and go for a first-strike ambush,” he said. “Hit ‘em hard and fast, before they’ve got chance to react. We don’t stand a cat in hell’s chance in a straight fight, so we’re going to have to fight dirty.” He glanced sideways at the Major. “At least we’ve now got access to a crate load of submachine guns.”

  Gilby was clearly unhappy with this suggestion, but the frown on his face showed he couldn’t think of anything better to counter it.

  “And what about Heidi?” Sean said, sounding as though he was tiring under the effort of being calm and reasonable. “We’re back to the problem of whether Gregor knows about his son or not.”

  He was still leaning against the window ledge. He had that caged restless air about him. The one that said the time for talking should have long been over and the time for action was here. I was watching him to the point where I didn’t immediately see Hofmann get to his feet.

  “Major Gilby,” he rumbled. “I must speak to you. In private.”

  “If you’ve anything to say, Herr Hofmann, then say it here,” Gilby said sharply. “This is no time for further secrecy.”

  Hofmann sighed. “In that case,” he said, his voice burdened, “I can assure you that Gregor Venko does not know about this latest development. There is no reason why he will not show for your rendezvous.”

  “And how, exactly, can you be so certain of that?”

  Hofmann seemed to grow more depressed at the question. “Because I know for sure that Jan is not working for Venko.”

  Gilby didn’t say anything to that, but his face said it for him. Hofmann glanced round at all of us and knew that he wasn’t going to get away with leaving it there.

  He sighed again, frowning into the space just in front of him, as though hoping that life’s autocue would provide him with the correct next lines. The autocue had stuck. He was on his own.

  He made his decision, came straighter in front of us. Something seemed to change under the surface of his face, a subtle shift of bones and skin, so the vacant muscle-bound look vanished and was replaced by a hard, keen-eyed stare. I’d caught a glimpse of it once before, but I hadn’t realised how complete an act Hofmann had been putting on. He’d relied on the assumption that men big in body are slow in mind. It had been a very effective disguise.

  “Because, Major,” he said and even his speech seemed faster now, “she is my commanding officer. Her correct name is Jan König, and she is a Major with the German security services.”

  König. German for King. If I’d had to point to anyone as being the German inflitrator I would most likely have suspected myself before I’d thought of Jan. She was just such a Londoner.

  “So,” Gilby said now, face pinched, “what does that make you?”

  “At this precise moment,” Hofmann said crisply, “probably guilty of treason, but I’ve spent the last two years as part of Major König’s team, tracking Gregor Venko. I understand a little of the way his mind works. Those who are loyal to him are well rewarded, but those who betray him, well—” He shrugged, letting his palms spread. “We have yet to find all of the bodies. If he turns up here tomorrow and you do not have Ivan to trade, he will not rest until you are all dead, and he will bring enough men with him to ensure this. Trying to lay a trap for him, with the resources at your disposal, is a pointless act of suicide.”

  Declan gave a hollow laugh. “Michael, me boy,” he said. “You’re not helping.”

  “Well, Herr Hofmann – assuming that is your real name?” Gilby said tightly. “If what you say is correct, we are in a rather difficult situation. Unless
you have any idea where Major König might have taken the boy?”

  He threw out this last as a sarcastic challenge, but Hofmann nodded with all seriousness.

  “Yes,” he said. “I think I do.”

  We all stared at him, but it was Sean who asked the question first, quite calm and matter of fact. “How do we know we can trust you?”

  Hofmann smiled at him. A quick smile, out of character. “Because I am the only chance you have of getting out of this alive,” he said simply. “Major, ask yourself this: What reason do I have to come forwards now, if not to try and help you? In theory, my job here is done. Why would I not just keep quiet, leave with the others, say nothing? You would never have known until it was too late.”

  “So why are you still here? Why didn’t Jan take you with her when she left?”

  “That I can’t answer,” he said and his expression hardened. “I was not privy to Major König’s plans, or I would have done my best to stop her carrying them out in the way she did. Perhaps that was why. Of late, there have been many aspects of her strategy with which I have not agreed.” He paused, then added, with reluctance, “I begin to doubt her judgement in this matter.”

  “Where has she taken him?” Sean demanded.

  “A safe house,” Hofmann said. “She will want to debrief him herself before she officially delivers him to her superiors.”

  Sean rose and glanced at Gilby. “Let me call one of my colleagues,” he said. “She can get us a list of safe houses in the area. We can narrow them down.”

  Hofmann looked shocked. “You have access to that kind of information?”

  Sean flashed him a grim smile. “Give her a computer and a high-speed internet link, and there isn’t much Madeleine can’t find out,” he said.

  “I know where Major König will have taken Ivan, and it won’t be on any official safe house list,” Hofmann said then. “Venko has slipped through our fingers so many times in the past that she has become convinced that the service has been compromised by someone from his organisation. She would have taken the boy somewhere she has arranged personally. She has become so paranoid about security, that’s why I am so sure that Venko does not know about his son’s capture.”

  “Where is this safe house?” Gilby asked, his interest keen.

  Hofmann looked at him rather sadly. “It is on the outskirts of Berlin,” he said. “Major König would have flown him out of Stuttgart by helicopter thirty minutes after she’d taken him from you. I’m sorry.”

  He looked round at our shocked and disappointed faces. The hope we’d begun to build was gone, sucked away like the air from a dead balloon.

  “Where exactly is the safe house?” Sean wanted to know, even though it could only have been an academic question.

  Hofmann sighed. “It’s more than six hundred kilometres from here, Herr Meyer,” he said heavily. He checked his watch. “You now have less than eleven hours to make it there and back. It is a hopeless task unless you have access to a private jet.”

  Sean smiled at him, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “No, but I think we can come pretty close to a flying machine.” He turned to Gilby, and there was a quiver about him now, a scent he’d picked up and was ready to run with. “Major,” he said. “Can I borrow your car?”

  ***

  Although he didn’t want to admit it, Gilby seemed to agree with Hofmann that trying to cover that kind of ground in the time we had just couldn’t be done. Sean met their dissension with a silent, determined disregard, refusing to be deflected.

  There was something about Sean that inspired a kind of confidence. He could have told you he was going to jump over the moon on the back of a cow and you’d have found yourself merely asking, “Jersey or Friesian?”

  Maybe that was why Gilby handed over the keys to the Nissan Skyline without the kind of argument I’d been expecting. The only thing that did cause controversy was Sean’s assertion that he wanted me to ride shotgun with him.

  Todd was keen to go himself and even Major Gilby would clearly have preferred to have had one of his own men in on the trip. Sean shook his head.

  “We must have Hofmann, and this car’s a two-squash-two at best, not a four seater,” he declared. “With any luck there will be four of us on the way back.”

  “So why let her fill up one of the seats?” Todd challenged. “Me or Figgis would be twice as much use.”

  “I don’t think so.” Sean eyed him coldly. “Charlie and I have been in action together before,” he said. “She won’t let me down. I know just how far she’s prepared to go.”

  He met my eyes, just briefly, and I saw a calm and steady trust there. A tangible sense of relief breezed over me.

  Todd was looking disgusted. “Yeah, all the way, by the sounds of it,” he complained.

  Sean turned and pinned the phys instructor with a savage glare. It would have taken a better man than Todd not to flinch under it. “You have no idea,” Sean said softly, and walked away from him.

  Outside someone had switched on the floodlights. They blazed out over the gravel to where the Skyline sat waiting, giving a faintly oily cast to the car’s paint.

  It was a brutal machine, resting rather than merely parked. Somehow you knew that the folds in its bodywork had been sculpted like skin over muscle, rather than the components living within the limitations of exterior line. No compromise.

  Without knowing why, the car scared me. It was the kind of vehicle that tempted you to kill yourself all too easily, like a big bike, or an offshore powerboat. It was bred for speed, for risk. I had no illusions that Sean was going to take it steady just because it was dark with a hint of ice in the wind. I glanced across at his set face. This was going to be a battle of wits and wills. All or nothing.

  Figgis met us then with a fistful of SIGs in speed-draw holsters and three of the PM-98s hanging over his shoulder. “Take your pick,” he said.

  “We’ll take the lot,” Sean said. “Don’t bother to wrap them.”

  “What about him?” Figgis asked quietly, nodding towards Hofmann.

  “Not yet,” Sean said. He glanced at Hofmann’s impassive face. “No offence.”

  Hofmann shrugged. “In your position,” he said, “I would do the same.”

  The back of the Nissan looked tiny, but the big German managed to fold his large frame up small enough to squeeze in behind my seat. It was only as Sean climbed into the driver’s side that I registered for the first time that the car was right-hand drive.

  “How the hell are you going to manage overtaking anything in this when you’re sitting on the wrong side of the car?” I asked.

  Sean flashed his teeth as he twisted the key in the ignition and the twin-turbo engine growled into life like the ringmaster had just prodded it with a chair and a whip.

  “You’ll have to call gaps in traffic for me,” he said. “Just give me the same amount of room you’d go for on a bike and I’ll get us through.”

  I rolled my eyes and suppressed a groan.

  Gilby leaned past me into the car and pressed something in the centre console. There were three faint beeps and then part of the stereo slid out and unfolded upright into a TV screen about seven inches across.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve got Alpine navigation as well?” Sean said, surprise in his voice.

  “Naturally,” Gilby said, unable to suppress the note of pride. “It covers the whole of Europe. Just punch in your destination and it’ll give you the fastest route.”

  Hofmann leaned forwards and gave him the street name on the outskirts of Berlin, spelling it out for him.

  “When you bought this puppy, Major,” Sean murmured as he quickly programmed the Alpine, “you certainly went for all the toys.”

  “Just keep your eye on the exhaust gas temperature and try not to melt the turbos,” Gilby advised, trying to make light of it even though his voice showed the strain he was under. “And don’t trash it. Nissan don’t make them any more. It’s practically irreplaceable.”


  I looked up from stowing the PM-98s in the bottom of my footwell. “Valentine,” I said gently, “if we don’t make it either way then I think finding you another car is going to be the least of our worries.”

  He nodded at that, face serious. “Good luck then,” he said and ducked back out, closing the door on us.

  “OK, is everybody buckled up?” Sean asked. That quick grin again, like a schoolboy who’s found his father’s hidden car keys. That restless edge. “I would ask you not to move about the cabin while the fasten seatbelts sign is on. We may be experiencing some turbulence.”

  From the back I heard Hofmann groan. “Now, for sure,” he said, “we are all going to die.”

  Twenty-six

  Getting from the narrow twisting back roads around Einsbaden to the main autobahn heading for Stuttgart took a perilous nineteen minutes. It made my wild taxi ride on the way in seem like a Sunday cruise.

  I tried not to clutch faithlessly at the base of my seat during that first part of the journey, but I feared that Gilby was never going to get rid of the indentations my fingers made in the leather upholstery. Suddenly I understood why Hofmann had opted for the rear.

  The headlights on the Skyline were far better than my Suzuki’s glow-worm-in-a-milk-bottle effort, but at that kind of speed they took on a delayed reaction, as though we were constantly arriving at the edge of darkness before the xenon bulbs had the chance to fully illuminate it.

  Sean drove to the very limit of visibility, which by my reckoning was some distance beyond the limit of sanity. The lights cut jagged swathes through the scenery as signposts, rocks, trees and junctions leapt towards us with a terrifying lack of clarity, blurring into a subliminal image before they’d ever had the chance to solidify. The broken white lines in the centre of the road became a single continuous streak.

  As for the corners, I’d thought Figgis had taken the bends more than fast enough on his demonstration drives in the school Audis. But that was in daytime. Midnight’s veil lent an extra hallucinatory dimension to the trip that I’d been unprepared for, and I surreptitiously hauled my lap belt as tight as it would go across my hips.