Simpson replied immediately. ‘As usual, Richter, your logic is impeccable, and that scenario fits well with one of the suggestions that the Intelligence Director has made. But if you and he are right, that does mean we don’t know the answer to one very important question.’
‘Exactly. Why were the bad guys expecting me to turn up at a crime scene in the Smoke? Because of the identity of the main target, they might have expected to see the old bod from Five or Six lurking about there. The Box would be fannying about getting all hot and bothered about domestic terrorism and bad publicity, questions in the House and stuff like that, and the guys from Legoland would be desperate to pull their irons out of the fire over this potential oil deal in Africa. But our remit is different. We just don’t do this kind of thing. Unless there’s some absolutely overwhelming reason for us to get involved, we just let the woodentops get on with it.’
‘So finish the sentence, Richter. Why were these anonymous hitmen hanging about in West London with pictures of you on their mobiles? Pretty bizarre sort of fan club.’
‘I don’t think it’s rocket science, Simpson. I think the prince was pretty much irrelevant. He was just a convenient target, and he was only important because he was entitled to armed protection from the DPG, and the real target was Jacko King. The prince, the hookers and the DPG guy who got shot were all collateral damage. They were really after Jacko, and that means he was alive when they put him in the back of the van, so they probably knocked him down with a rubber bullet or a beanbag round, something like that, just enough to put him out of commission for a few minutes. And because I know Jacko, and because the hitmen obviously knew that the attack would be captured on CCTV and they would know that we’d see them take him away, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for them to guess I might get assigned to investigate.’
‘Wrong tense, Richter,’ Simpson said, an obvious change in his voice.
‘What?’
‘You don’t know Jacko King. You knew Jacko King.’
‘That figures,’ Richter said. ‘Where and when?’
‘Just over ninety minutes ago, the Essex plods responded to a triple nine call on a mobile from a guy walking his dog on the edge of Epping Forest. The dog had started barking at a clump of bushes and wouldn’t stop or leave the spot. When the owner walked over to see what had happened, he found himself looking at the naked body of a well-built middle-aged man, obviously dumped there pretty recently. Ever since the assassination, every police force in Britain has had Jacko King’s photograph and a full physical description. The formal identification hasn’t happened yet, but there’s no doubt about who it is.’
‘What state was he in? Apart from being dead, I mean.’
‘We’re waiting on the detailed report, but I persuaded the pathologist to give me a quick verbal summary.’
Richter knew exactly how persuasive Simpson could be, especially with people employed in any capacity by the British government, his negotiating technique a mixture of appeals to patriotism laced with overt threats of imminent and permanent unemployment should his wishes not be carried out promptly and efficiently. And he had the clout to make good on any threats he made.
‘He wasn’t,’ Simpson continued, ‘a pretty sight. Somebody had worked him over with what the pathologist thought was a knuckle duster or a steel bar, maybe a baton, but that was only for openers. There was also evidence of extensive burning, probably using a blow torch, over much of his abdomen, legs and feet. His testicles had been flattened and ruptured by a pair of pliers and most of his fingernails had gone. And there was other stuff as well, but you get the picture. Somebody definitely wanted him to talk, and my guess is that eventually he did.’
‘Sooner or later, and usually sooner with that kind of interrogation,’ Richter said quietly, ‘everybody talks. How did he die? Shock and blood loss, or something else?’
‘Somebody put a bullet through his head, and death must have come as a relief to him by that time, if he was still conscious, I mean.’
‘Any idea of the weapon?’
‘Medium calibre and very close range because of the powder burns. The pathologist guessed it was a subsonic round from a nine-millimetre pistol, and he’ll be able to confirm that when he does the autopsy, because the bullet is still in King’s skull. We should be able to match that bullet to the murder weapon, if we ever find it.’
‘Not much chance of that,’ Richter said. ‘If they left the bullet in the body, the weapon will either have been clean – not used in any previous crime – or more likely it’s already been dumped somewhere we’re not going to find it. If it could possibly have been linked to the perpetrator, they’d have opened up his skull and dug it out. Or just strangled him or cut his throat or something. Whoever these people are, they’re confident, organised and efficient.’
‘Back to the big question, Richter. It’s obvious that you’re their target, but do you think they grabbed King just to see if you would be sent out to investigate the assassination of the prince and the way he was snatched, or were they interrogating him to try to find your address or something?’
‘Probably both,’ Richter replied. ‘They might have asked him those questions but all Jacko would know is that I live somewhere in London. I don’t tell anyone my address unless it’s absolutely essential, and it almost never is. I just give them the Hammersmith details and tell them to leave a message there. He probably had my personal mobile number, but that uses a prepaid and anonymous SIM card so that would be a dead end as far as tracing me is concerned. Don’t forget, Jacko was just a casual acquaintance, someone I met up at Hereford through Colin Decker when I was doing stuff with the Regiment. I haven’t even seen him for months.’
‘But that does rather suggest another question,’ Simpson said. ‘Somehow or other, these people must have found out there was a link, albeit a tenuous one, between you and King. Maybe they’ve had people up in Hereford, sniffing around the pubs and bars where the SAS guys go to unwind. A few drinks, casual conversation, or perhaps even just overhearing some of the soldiers talking together. I mean, there can’t be that many outsiders, and especially civilian outsiders, who spend much time at Stirling Lines.’
‘True enough, though it’s not exactly a secret.’ Richter paused for a moment, recalling one recent incident. ‘And I’ve just remembered something. I was doing that covert surveillance exercise up there a few months ago when you needed me back in London to handle that extraction – getting Salah Khatid out of the terrorist cell he’d infiltrated – and recalled me. But I was dug in so well that the SAS search teams couldn’t find me for over two days. Colin Decker told me that caused a certain amount of amusement in the Regiment, and in fact Jacko King was one of the members of the patrol that finally delivered your message to me. So that’s a link, right there, and that could well be the reason Jacko was snatched. They might have assumed we knew each other better than we really did.’
‘Bad luck for King.’
‘That’s one way of putting it.’
‘So what’s your plan now?’ Simpson asked. ‘No, let me rephrase that. Have you actually got a plan?’
‘I’m working on it. After that contact on the way here, we took it nice and slowly, but neither Dave nor Carpenter spotted any confirmed surveillance, though I spotted a possible. That doesn’t mean we weren’t followed, because there was a lot of traffic around and they could well have been using multiple vehicles and switching them around, but nothing really stood out to them or to me. We’ve seen nothing on the perimeter surveillance cameras or other detectors, and no sign of vehicles or people loitering anywhere near the house. That doesn’t mean they’re not out there, just that we haven’t seen them yet.’
‘Well, you can’t stay in the safe house for ever, Richter. I need you out in the field, and soon.’
‘I only got here twenty minutes ago. Give me a bloody chance.’
That was a slight exaggeration, because the Transit had actually pulled up outside the house ne
arly two hours earlier.
‘How’s the wound?’
‘Sore, but the heavy-duty painkillers are taking the edge off it, and I can move okay. And I’ve no intention of staying here any longer than I have to. We’re prepped and ready for any kind of assault, and if that’s going to happen it’ll probably be tonight, so I’m going to try and get some sleep soon as I get off the phone. Dave and Carpenter are here, along with the two house staff, so there are enough of us to work a watch system overnight. But we’re not going to do that.’
‘What? Why?’
‘I’ll get to that in a minute. Basically, we’ve done everything we can to make sure the bad guys know where we are. We’ve even parked the van outside the house just in case the opposition drive past, so that they’ll know we’re here.’
‘And if they don’t hit the place tonight? What then?’
‘I’m confident they’ll do it tonight, but if they don’t then I’ll work out some other way of going proactive. I’ll just get myself out there and visible somewhere. To act as bait, basically, but being out in the open is definitely the worst option.’
‘I’m not too keen on that either, Richter. You’re too valuable to me to lose.’
‘I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. You getting sentimental in your old age?’
‘Don’t push it, Richter.’ The steel was back in Simpson’s voice. ‘You’re a useful asset, but like any asset you can always be replaced. Why do you want to make yourself a target?’
‘I’m not making myself a target – I am the target. And because we have to finish this. We have to find out who these people are. I’m not going to be any use to you or anyone else if I’m constantly watching my back and waiting for some guy to blow me away. But there are a couple of things you can do for me.’
‘What?’
Richter explained exactly what he wanted, and why.
‘I know you too well, Richter,’ Simpson said. ‘I figured you’d need something like that, and I’ve already made the call. It’ll take about three hours, and there’ll be four of them.’
‘Good. But don’t send them here.’
‘What? Why not?’
Richter told him what he had in mind.
‘That’s sneaky,’ Simpson said, when he’d finished. ‘It’s a good idea and I like it.’
‘And there’s something else, but you might not like this at all.’
This time, the request he made was couched rather more as an order than anything else, but Simpson ignored that and concentrated on the specifics of what Richter just said.
‘That sounds to me like a spectacularly stupid idea, even for you. How do you know you’re right?’
‘I don’t, but I do know what I saw. If I’m wrong, there’s no harm done. But if I’m right, we should be able to end this tonight.’
‘Okay. It’s your choice, and maybe your funeral, but I’ll get it sorted.’
Richter opened his mouth to reply, then dropped the phone, stood up and grabbed his MP5 as he heard the unmistakable sound of breaking glass from somewhere on the ground floor of the house.
Chapter 14
But even as Richter moved quickly and quietly towards the door of the room, the MP5 cocked and ready, his brain was already telling him that something wasn’t right, that what he’d heard didn’t constitute any kind of a threat.
The safe house was a small and undistinguished Victorian property, purchased about a decade earlier by the Secret Intelligence Service to use for a variety of different purposes: sometimes as a safe house, but more commonly for sensitive debriefings of assets or agents from other intelligence organisations, unofficial meetings between operatives of different services and a variety of other non-specific but usually covert functions.
It had even, on one memorable occasion, been the location for a two-day SIS Christmas party that got well out of hand, the short-term results including severe inebriation for all the participants, two of them so severe that they technically resulted in alcohol poisoning, and a concussion caused by one SIS agent diving from the top of a wardrobe and landing largely on his head, his purpose in ascending that piece of furniture, and then launching himself from it, never being satisfactorily explained. And, only manifesting themselves some weeks later, four cases of a sexually transmitted disease that were traced back to a single embarrassed female source who technically out-ranked the quartet who had ended up with the disease.
After purchase, the SIS had made a number of structural changes to the property. These included replacing both the front and rear doors with much more substantial units constructed from a sheet steel panel sandwiched between two layers of wood, high specification locks that operated a series of deadbolts to secure the doors in the steel-lined frames, and – more significantly for Richter’s thought processes at that moment – bullet-proof glass in all the windows on both floors.
The term ‘bullet-proof’ is actually extremely non-specific, because the grades of protection available differ significantly. The cheapest armoured glass will resist the impact of a round from a medium calibre handgun, typically a nine-millimetre bullet, fired from about ten yards, but a high-powered rifle round will probably go straight through it. To protect against that kind of impact requires thicker and stronger glass, and significantly deeper pockets for the purchaser. And even then, a round from the most powerful long-distance sniper rifles – something like the Barrett M82 and its heavy-duty brethren, which can fire half-inch bullets with lethal accuracy for well over one mile – will very likely be powerful enough to penetrate it. After all, these weapons have an anti-armour capability, and have a variety of bullet types to make sure they can drive through almost everything.
The SIS has a substantial annual budget, but it also has substantial annual commitments, and when the safe house was being renovated, the glass in all the windows had been replaced by medium quality bullet-proof double-glazed units set into uprated wooden frames fitted with steel cores.
For one of the windows to be shattered would take a rifle bullet at the very least, and if that had happened, as well as the sound of breaking glass, Richter knew that there would also have been the deeper noise of the bullet’s impact somewhere inside the property, and an explosion of sound as the glass shattered. And he had heard nothing like that.
When he pushed open the door to the kitchen, he was still holding the MP5 in front of him, though he’d already guessed that the weapon was superfluous.
‘Sorry about that,’ one of the permanent safe house staff said, pointing at the wet floor in front of him, where he was sweeping up the remains of what looked like a large glass jug. ‘The bloody handle just came away when I picked it up.’
On the other side of the room, Stephen Carpenter, also carrying his MP5, nodded to Richter.
‘No threat, no danger,’ he said, ‘and you’d better get some sleep. This could be a long night.’
‘I will, right now. Just do me a favour. I was on the line to Simpson at Hammersmith when I heard the noise, and I just dropped the phone and grabbed the gun. Give him a call back and let him know that we’ve had a minor domestic accident, not been assaulted by a bunch of armed killers.’
‘Got it,’ Carpenter replied. ‘Now get to bed.’
Going to sleep did not necessarily mean going to bed, and Richter had no intention of getting undressed and into bed. He knew that if the safe house was attacked, there would be no time for the luxury of pulling his clothes on.
He picked one of the bedrooms at the front of the house, overlooking the short drive that led to the minor road, and before he did anything else he pulled the curtains closed and then checked his weapons, one at a time. He removed the magazine from the Browning, worked the slide to eject the round in the chamber, and then stripped all the rounds out of the magazine before reloading it. That was supposed to prevent jams, though in his experience the Hi-Power was one of the more reliable pistols from that point of view. With the magazine in place, he pulled back the sli
de and then released it, chambering a round and cocking the weapon, ready for immediate use. He set the safety catch and then turned his attention to the Heckler and Koch, and repeated the process with the magazine from the submachine-gun.
With his weapons checked, Richter removed the shoulder holster and the Kevlar vest he’d been wearing since he left the hospital room, and then removed his shirt to check the dressing over the wound in his side. One of the safe house staff was a trained medic, experienced in treating battlefield injuries, and he had replaced the dressing soon after Richter had arrived. When he looked at it now, he could see no sign of bleeding. But the ache was starting again, and he took another of the strong painkillers he’d been given so that he would be able to sleep.
He put his shirt back on, but not the Kevlar vest because that would just be too uncomfortable, placed the Browning and the MP5 on one side of the double bed along with the bullet-proof vest, then lay down on the other side of the bed, snapped off the lights and closed his eyes.
What seemed like a couple of minutes later, an irritating buzzing sound dragged him away from a complex and confusing dream involving mobile filing cabinets with minds of their own. He looked at the illuminated digital display on the bedside clock and saw that it was just after eleven forty. Beside the clock was a small black box – an intercom unit that linked all the rooms in the house – on which a red light was blinking rhythmically. He reached over and pressed the answer button.
‘Richter.’
‘It’s Steve. We may have company. One of the motion detectors on the perimeter behind the house has just been triggered. The IR cameras don’t cover the grounds that far out, and right now I’m not seeing anything closer. But you might want to get down here, just in case.’
‘I’m on my way.’
Three minutes later, Richter walked into the control room, a small square and windowless space more or less in the centre of the ground floor of the house, another one of the SIS modifications. Carpenter was sitting in front of a full-width desk in a leather swivel chair staring at a bank of flat-screen monitors on which a number of different images were displayed, the monochrome scenes being captured by the infrared cameras that surrounded the property. Above the screens was a horizontal box which displayed a line of eleven green lights and a single pulsing light in red, above which was the number four.
Retribution Page 10
