Killer Elite

by Ranulph Fiennes

  John handed the generator spare to the commandant’s messenger, strapped the boy into the rear of the Bell with a set of headphones, and left for Shiraija. The village was no more than a mile from the Sayq camp but tucked into the upper reaches of a near-vertical ravine. The mountainside below fell away in giddy tiers of irrigated steps. Every layer was tended by artificial channels that overflowed from level to level to the very last of the tiny fertile orchards 3,000 feet below.

  Plants and trees with exotic foliage hung heavy with fruit: figs, peaches, almonds, walnuts, berries, bananas and pomegranates, to name but a few. Sugarcane groves thrived on the lower tiers and lawns of lucerne waved in the cool, scented breeze at every level.

  Crewman Ali conferred with the young Arab, who, face pressed to the Plexiglas, kept making downward motions. The girl must have been working in the very lowest of the orchards. John circled slowly, banking so the boy could see the terraces below. At length the young Arab shouted into the headsets so that both airmen winced. He had spotted his wife.

  Six hundred feet above the victim’s location John found a lucerne bed just wide enough for the helicopter to land without the rotors smashing into the wall of the next terrace. The three of them scrambled down through the orchards to where the girl lay in long grass. Her face was tinted with the yellow dye of the saffron flower. He saw at once that she was dead. The poor lass, John thought: she had died alone and in great pain. Her body was rigid and arched, her eyes wide-open and her tongue extended. She looked so young to be married-no more than twelve, he estimated. Her throat glands were horribly puffed out, so John felt her wrist for a pulse. There was none. He touched one of her eyes but there was no reaction. The snake’s body, broken and battered, lay in the dirt. John saw that it was an eckis, not a cobra, and almost certainly, with its broad flat head, a highly poisonous Schneider.

  The boy knelt beside the dead girl. His hands came together at his mouth and tears ran down his face. John clenched the boy’s shoulders and as the deep, dry sobbing began, held him close.

  They carried the little body with care to the helicopter. John spoke with the Sayq duty signaler, and when they returned to the camp, a Land Rover with a stretcher and body bag awaited them.

  John’s lasting memory of that day was the face of the boy, as lost and alone as a wounded gazelle. He and Ali were silent as they flew back to Seeb. John said nothing to Bridgie that evening, but he felt especially tender toward her and their three-year-old son, Oliver.

  15

  Mason paid the cab driver at a point where the morning traffic, a honking mishmash of camels and motors, passed through a gap torn in the town wall. Matrah, an ants’ nest of commerce, had changed greatly in the year since Mason’s Omani service. A modern harbor, Port Qaboos, was under construction, and bulldozers were sweeping away much of the old town to make space for modern office units.

  Davies was not in a hurry and behaved like any expatriate worker newly arrived in so fascinating a city. He wandered at will through the babble of Asian building workers, gazed awhile at the old and the new in the harbor area, and ambled to the inner walled market of the Khojas, the Sur al-Lawatiyah. Generations of Khoja merchants, originally from Sind, had retained their language and customs while masterminding Matrah commerce from the tangled and labyrinthine corridors of the Lawatiyah.

  Mason was forced to close in or risk losing the Welshman. The narrow scented passageways seethed with humanity, and Mason began to sense a certain urgency and purpose to the hitherto random course of his quarry. A head and shoulders above most of the crowd, he managed to keep in touch, but only with difficulty and many a hostile glance from the white-robed denizens of the sooq.

  At a divergence of three corridors Mason was unable to wedge a passage between two women in black-beaked Ibadhi masks. “Min fadlak,” he shouted, “indee mushkila,” but the women, both as heavy and round as Soviet shotputters, ignored him. Their fishwife gossip merely gathered strength, each talking, neither listening. Davies disappeared.

  A half hour search of every stall in the Lawatiyah and its adjacent streets proved fruitless, so Mason took a cab back to the Gulf Hotel. Davies would return there in due course and Mason had things to prepare that were better done without delay, now that Davies was showing signs of activity.

  In his bathroom he reassembled the ten rounds of ammunition with his Lyman crimping tool and heated the rifle barrel over a flat iron obtained from the chambermaid. The black wax melted and he knocked the steel rod loose. Later he would pull the barrel through with petrol-soaked swabs. After packing a travel bag with the detached stock and the barrel, he added some clothing and equipment, then ordered a taxi.

  “Muaskar al Murtafa’a,” he instructed the driver, referring to the Northern Headquarters complex of the Sultan’s Armed Forces. At the security gate his taxi was waved past; Mason looked like the officer he had once been. Over four hundred British officers and NCOs worked for their Omani superiors within the sprawling barracks, and the turnover rate was such that no one knew everyone else.

  In the lavatory of the officers’ mess, Mason changed into the uniform of the Desert Regiment, which differed from that of other SAF regiments only in the color of beret and belt. He was pleased that during his time back in Europe he had not put on weight. He walked through the camp, returning salutes as appropriate, to the lines of the Motor Transport Section. Hundreds of Bedford lorries, Land Rovers, and Land Cruisers were parked beside a like number of civilian Datsuns and a smattering of Mercedes for use by more senior officers.

  A fairly strict vehicle sign-out procedure existed, but Mason had ignored all red tape in days when resources and manpower were smaller and control much tighter, so he found a Datsun with keys in the ignition and drove back to the Gulf Hotel without troubling the “official channels.” He left the car in the hotel parking lot, far enough away from the main entrance for the SAF number plate not to be noticeable, and in any case it appeared to be one of many white Datsuns. He entered the foyer. Davies’s key was still missing from its pigeonhole, so Mason settled down with a Scotch and slightly stale Newsweek in a far corner of the lobby. Without his brown Desert Regiment beret, he was merely an army staff officer taking it easy.

  The Khoja merchant was as fat as a sumo wrestler and his bald scalp glinted under the fluorescent bulbs as a result of daily application of scented unguent. He was solicitous in the extreme and twice interrupted the meeting with offers of more coffee before de Villiers bade him leave them in peace.

  He emerged from the majlis, the inner room used for entertaining and business, glad that he had overcharged the supercilious sons of bitches. He joined their “local representative,” Karim Bux, in the small room immediately behind his stall.

  “This tall man was English?” Karim Bux asked the Khoja. “You are certain?” The merchant shrugged. “It is as I told you. My sisters saw only this tall foreigner behind your friend, so, as instructed, they blocked his way. He spoke to them in good Arabic but like an Ingleezi .”

  Karim Bux sipped at his loomee. Despite the fans, the cushioned room was rank with the smell of lovemaking and he wished de Villiers would hurry up. He decided to make no mention of the man who had followed Davies. There was always a smattering of Europeans about the Lawatiyah. The Khoja and his sisters were probably merely fishing for an extra tip.

  Karim Bux was Tadnams’ only agent in the subcontinent and had plenty of overdue work in Delhi. He objected to his current role in Oman, for he was not accustomed to playing second fiddle to Europeans. But he kept his feelings to himself for Tadnams paid him well and he knew his three charges were veterans, possibly with influence in Earls Court.

  Davies leafed through the photographs of John Milling, his wife, and two other men: they showed the men in uniform, or simply relaxing by the seaside. “Big fellow, this Milling, looks like some Greek god,” Davies commented.

  De Villiers shrugged. “Tomorrow we will test his immortality.”

  Davies was content wi
th the plans. He preferred methods that the Clinic had successfully used in the past, and de Villiers had, in Milling’s case, settled for a simple domestic accident.

  For two weeks the Millings had been subjected to an intensive and annotated study. It was the custom of the Clinic to spot repetitive patterns of activity in their prospective targets’ lives or, if none were apparent, to gain access to some pointer to their future plans such as an office wall chart, a diary or a personal secretary who could be encouraged to gossip.

  Once a pattern or a specific intended activity was identified, the Clinic would select a time and place where the target would be alone and vulnerable to an accident.

  On arrival in Oman, de Villiers had settled in at the Intercontinental Hotel and Meier at the Falaj Hotel. De Villiers looked after Milling’s home life and Meier his Police Air Wing activities.

  A sign at the Air Wing perimeter gate announced maintenance works by J amp;P Contractors, so Meier went to their recruiting office in Azaiba. His excellent references, including seven years with Mercedes, probably helped, but electrical and mechanical engineers were anyway much sought after. As luck would have it, that morning J amp;P had sent a European engineer home on compassionate leave. The company’s considerable connections in high places enabled it, under the current circumstances, to circumvent the normal immigration rule that would have required Meier to leave the country while his work-permit application was being processed. He was able to start work within a few hours of the initial phone call to J amp;P’s sponsor’s office. He was assigned to the maintenance team handling the contract for the Royal Flight and Police complex, including the current alterations to the Police Air Wing workshops.

  Subsequent comparative studies indicated that, while Meier was keen and confident that he could sabotage Milling’s helicopter in such a way as to produce “accidental death,” a more certain method would be a visit to the target’s home at a time of day when he was normally alone.

  Davies was to provide backup and removal facilities, while the other two would complete the killing in a manner they had carefully prepared and rehearsed.

  The Clinic agreed to all the details and Karim Bux dropped them off, each within walking distance of their separate hotels.

  At 3:45 p.m. John Milling, a green and white wizaar wrapped about his waist, watched his wife set off for her usual Thursday shopping spree at the Matrah Cold Store supermarket.

  He felt a pang of quite unnecessary jealousy as his friend Geoff Leggatt, six feet four inches tall, helped Bridgie into the front passenger seat. Even seven and a half months pregnant she was stunningly attractive. The long slim legs, the golden blond hair, the large green eyes and the sparky Irish temperament had earned her the tag of the loveliest, sexiest girl in Oman.

  Cha Cha, their albino Kashmiri houseboy, sat in the back with three-year-old Oliver, whose features already showed the Milling stamp. Geoff slammed the door and waved to John. They had been friends since schooldays in Enniskillen. Four years ago John had fallen headlong in love with Bridgie, who was then Geoff’s girlfriend. A passionate affair followed, punctuated by Bridgie’s worldwide travels, for she was then a BOAC hostess. Geoff accepted the situation and they all remained the best of friends. He had called in at their home in Seeb a week earlier on his way to teach English in Japan.

  John Milling closed the front door of the bungalow and settled into an armchair with his feet on the drawing-room table. In an hour or so he would go jogging along the coast road. This was not his normal practice on Thursday afternoons, but the pilot, James A. Sims, Jr., with whom he usually jogged or went scuba diving twice a week, was on leave. Jim was a tall, dark native of Tennessee and unmarried. John was looking forward to this outing since he found it hard going to keep pace with the athletic American and today he would accompany the forty-five-year-old George Halbert, a retired RAF navigator and one of the Air Wing’s fixed-wing pilots. George liked to drink and to keep fit so he indulged in binges of each activity on alternate months. He lived just down the street from the Millings.

  The Economist magazine fell to the floor as John nodded off to the gentle rattle of the air-conditioning. Some minutes later he woke with a start at the chime of the doorbell. Perhaps George had arrived early, the silly bugger, in the full heat of the afternoon.

  Milling recognized neither of his visitors. Both wore slacks and clean white shirts, and the balding, shorter man with spectacles carried a briefcase. Both were profuse in their apologies. They had not realized Superintendent Milling would be resting. They would come back later. They were American military historians writing a definitive account of guerrilla wars in the mid- to late twentieth century. Colin Maxwell and Ted Ashley had suggested they seek Milling’s advice. John’s curiosity was pricked.

  “Come in.” He waved them into the cool, curtained living room. “I can offer you a beer, loomee or iced tea.”

  He indicated the armchairs and padded to the refrigerator in the kitchen. The bungalow was mostly open-plan. The refrigerator was tucked against a side wall in the kitchen and just out of sight of the living room. As Milling returned, grasping two beer cans and tankards, he noticed the snub-nosed revolver in the hands of the taller man.

  “Put the beers down, Superintendent, and lie facedown on the floor.”

  Milling did so.

  “Now clasp your hands together, fingers interlaced, behind your back.”

  One of the men bound his fingers and then his wrists together with a material that felt like electrical tape. Although there was no discomfort, the bindings were rock solid and did not respond to his subsequent attempts to dislodge them.

  He was helped into one of the chairs and the armed man stayed behind him. The other set up an 8mm cine camera on a tripod, then moved around the bungalow bolting windows and doors. He moved a single venetian blind aside to allow more light onto Milling’s face.

  Meier took his briefcase into the bathroom and quickly made his preparations. Two days earlier, while the Milling family were at the beach, with Cha Cha handling their barbecue, de Villiers had taken a plaster-cast impression of the corner of the shower plinth, six inches above floor level in the bathroom. Karim Bux had then prepared, with molten lead, a truncheon head shaped in the plaster-cast mold.

  The death scenario was simple. Milling had decided to take a prejog shower, slipped on some spilled shampoo, tore the shower curtain loose in falling and struck the plinth corner with his occiput, the point where skull joins neck. The resultant depressed fracture of the skull would cause brain damage and death. Since only one blow could be struck, Meier had an ample supply of polythene in readiness to induce asphyxiation if necessary.

  Satisfied that all was ready in the bathroom, Meier returned to the cine camera and gave the go-ahead to de Villiers, who moved the revolver and his head into frame, close behind Milling’s. He spoke slowly and clearly. “On October 18, 1969, you murdered Salim bin Amr Bait Na’ath in an ambush at the Dhofari village Qum. Do you admit this?”

  Milling was silent for a moment, digesting this totally unexpected and preposterous accusation. When he replied his voice was controlled.

  “In 1969 I was an army officer fighting communist terrorists. I remember leading part of my company for the Qum operations and I remember that two adoo were killed but not by me.”

  Only the whirr of the camera and the faint clatter of the air-conditioning disturbed the silence. De Villiers tried again.

  “As the officer in charge of the Qum ambush you were in overall charge of all your men. If, under your orders, one of them fired the bullets that killed Salim bin Amr, you are as responsible for his death as if you had personally murdered him.”

  The events, nearly eight years ago, came back to John Milling in a rush. He knew exactly what had happened, but if he gave a name he would endanger someone else. He took the middle course.

  “Whoever you are, you are crazy. Nobody is murdered in battle. Soldiers eliminate their enemy in military, not moral, circumstance
s.”

  De Villiers did not hesitate. “You could have accepted the surrender of Salim bin Amr. There was no need to shoot him down. You will now be executed as decreed by the father of the man you murdered.”

  A part of Milling’s mind toyed with the idea that these men were mad, obsessed with some vendetta, or even involved in some weird Esther Rantzen-inspired joke. But Meier’s eyes, the hard, flat tones of de Villiers’s voice and the quiet economy of movement of both men, militated against such theories.

  “There was an officer who ambushed a Marxist commissar at Qum. I remember the event but not the name of the officer.” John remembered the name very well but was damned if he would reveal it. “If you do not believe me, check it out for yourselves. The officer wrote a book about that ambush and the events leading up to it. He clearly described the whole affair.”

  “Do you have this book?”

  Again John found he could not save his own skin at the expense of another man. The book was some two paces behind his chair with many other titles on Arabia.

  “No,” he replied, “but it is easily obtainable through the Family Bookshop in Muscat.”

  De Villiers had seen it all before. Faced with imminent death, most people find rational thought elusive, but there are many who remain cool and capable of creating a web of deceit in their bid to stay alive. Knowing that Milling was indisputably the only British officer in the area and that Salim bin Amr died at the hands of a white Caucasian, de Villiers was unmoved by Milling’s evasions. He looked at Meier, who nodded. The film was in the can.

  De Villiers took no chances, since Milling was unquestionably fit and powerful. The revolver remained out of sight and out of reach.

  “Stay on your knees and go to the shower room.”