The Purple Contract

by Robin Flett

  Helga looked at Klaus. 'What's going on?'

  'I don't know. Maybe just a coincidence. He lives hereabouts, and this is a big hotel. There are any amount of reasons why he might park here.'

  'Was he in the car?' Helga asked her brother.

  'No, it was empty.'

  'Klaus thought about that. 'Could he have just left it in the car park while he is elsewhere in the town?'

  'I suppose so. But if we watch the car ...' Uwe was actually fidgeting with impatience, his face a picture of frustration. Christ, what a chance, and they were going to lose it if these two didn't––

  Klaus made up his mind. They couldn't afford to miss an opportunity like this. Coincidence or not. 'Come on.' He led the way out of the bar and down the steps to the rear entrance. 'We'll watch the Range Rover until he comes back to it. We can't do anything to him here––too many witnesses. If nothing else, we can follow him back to wherever he lives.'

  Hollis had been wondering how best to stir up the Germans, two of whom he had noted in the hotel bar. He had been sitting in the hotel's reception area, practically deserted at this time of night, having moved one of the easy chairs so that its high back was facing the door, screening him from casual view. The glass framing an impressive aerial photograph of Inverness provided adequate reflective means of keeping an eye on what was happening in the room behind him.

  Apparently absorbed in a tourist brochure, he had heard Uwe's rapid footsteps on the stairs even before the young man's blond head came into view. Hollis spoke no German, but the urgency clearly audible in Uwe's voice as he entered the bar spoke volumes. Tossing the booklet aside, he moved rapidly across the room and downstairs to the car park.

  The timing was almost perfect.

  As the three Germans came out the door they saw the Range Rover pulling out into the sparse traffic. By the time they had piled into the gray Volvo estate Hollis was disappearing down Bank Street, his headlights reflecting oddly in the black, fast moving waters of the river.

  Uwe had 'acquired' the Volvo 440 in Wales to replace the faltering Bedford van. The number plates had been changed of course, and Volvos were commonplace in the UK. Routine tradecraft for people who lived their lives on the edge, in a world outside society and civilization.

  The Range Rover led them through alien streets. Even if they had possessed a street map they couldn't have followed their path in the darkness. Klaus Ditmar was glad to see the streetlights thin out ahead. A few seconds later they bumped over the Tomnahurich Bridge, a swing bridge across the Caledonian Canal. Klaus had his bearings now, confirmed by the appearance of a large expanse of water gleaming in the occasional moonlight between scudding clouds. This must be the road south alongside Loch Ness to Fort William. He put the Volvo into top gear and began to close the distance, consciously trying to relax. Perfect, he thought, just perfect.

  The last of the streetlights were behind them now. Hollis glanced at the speedo: fifty five. The road was dry and empty of traffic, bounded by fields on both sides, although in a very short time they would be running right alongside the loch. The Range Rover wasn’t the ideal tool for this kind of thing, large and unwieldy. But it was all that was available.

  Mirror: lights.

  That was all right, hadn't lost them then. Hollis had driven this road countless times and knew it well. But did he know it well enough? He had only done this sort of thing once before, in the States, and there was the inevitable sense of life finely balanced. Russian Roulette, he thought grimly. Poetic justice and no mistake.

  The thing was, the chances of getting out of this situation in one piece were not overly optimistic. There were an uncomfortably large number of uncertainty factors in play. Not least of which was just how badly the Germans wanted to lay hands on Mike Hollis. How far would they go? What were they thinking right now? They would have little alternative but to believe that he was going somewhere specific on this road close to midnight.

  A massive rock wall looming now on the right. Hollis had been driving on dipped headlights, not going to full-beam even when clouds obscured the moon. That was going to be a problem: the moon. Just one more complication to be dealt with when the time came.

  The headlights were bright in the mirror now. Throwing shadows around the cab and degrading Hollis' night vision. The road ahead suddenly seemed darker than it really was. He distinctly felt the heat from the beams as the other car came close astern.

  So that's their game.

  Hollis started jabbing the brakes, seeing the vehicle behind him looming close each time. Big thing, Volvo or something equally heavy. They started to get used to the rhythm and he abruptly changed to a wide swing across the full width of the road. Vegetation flashing past now, nothing but darkness to the left. A low wall bordering the water appeared in the lights for a second as they charged past a picnic area, taking a double bend as straight as possible to avoid setting up an oscillation that could put both vehicles into the loch.

  In the 440, Uwe sat wedged into corner in the wide rear seat, between the heavily padded back of the seat and the door, supporting himself with one arm along the top and the other braced against Helga's seat immediately in front. The car jerked across a pothole swinging through the Z-bend, thumping his head hard against the window. Christ he thought I'm glad we buried that bloody SAM in a hide yesterday, I wouldn't want it banging around in here right now!

  Another bend and Hollis knew this one was a killer, literally. Accident Black Spot. Yes, quite. He deliberately misjudged it, seeing the serrated rock wall leap at them out of the dark.

  'Watch out!' Helga screamed, grabbing for support.

  Klaus snatched his foot from the gas pedal, feeling the wheels scrunching and bouncing on the grass verge under him. For Christ's sake don't touch the brakes! The steering wheel jerked spasmodically under his hands and then they hit something: glass shattered and a screech of metal sprayed sparks into the blackness. But the jolt had thrown them back onto the roadway, the vehicle rocking violently on its suspension and swinging erratically. Klaus concentrated on keeping the thing straight and let the speed wind down of its own accord.

  The lights in his mirror dimmed suddenly, causing Hollis to smile to himself. He gunned the Range Rover and went all the way up through the gears, flicking the headlights to full beam and pushing it to nearly 90 mph on the straights. No lights in the mirror as yet, but they wouldn't be long.

  The night seemed even darker now that the moon had gone in again: the clouds were gathering from the west––not going to be much of a night, well that was all right. Not much further surely. Hollis had picked out the place and it was the only one suitable for miles and he needed to hit it exactly at the right time and the right speed or it was curtains. Finis.

  One chance: that was all he'd get, all he could expect. The vicious Z-bend had been the marker. Use it to open the gap between the cars long enough for him to get clear and leave the Germans having to push hard to make up. When the time came they would already be at the edge of the safety envelope and ripe for picking.

  Mirror: lights.

  Coming now all right, but the glow was fainter than it had been. Hit something back there possibly, maybe lost a headlight? All the better.

  You can do it best by clearing a critical amount of distance between your own car and theirs, relying on technique and the acceleration/distance factor to slow them up enough to let you get clear ahead. The Z-bend thing had chopped the time factor and brought the twin spectres of frustration and fear into play. They must have come close to disaster right there, and now the adrenaline surge would be seeking an outlet.

  'Kick it, Klaus, we're losing him!' Helga shouted. The headlights ahead disappeared yet again as the road twisted along the lochside.

  'Come on, come on,' Klaus muttered. The gas pedal was pressed into the carpet but the Volvo was a heavy machine and the speed seemed to build appallingly slowly. Part of it was certainly that his time-sense was distorted. Thrown out of sync by the enveloping d
arkness and the disorientation brought on by the constantly shifting points of reference outside.

  The power was full on now, and Hollis left it there while he tried to think calmly about what he had to do next.

  Russian Roulette. But how many chambers were loaded?

  The forebrain was busy attempting to work out the odds. Crisis evaluation, yes, you could say that. The thing was he didn't know what kind of person was driving the Volvo, or whatever-it-may-be. Might even be the girl, although that was less likely. What would his reaction time be under stress? How much driving experience did he have and was he properly trained? Most important of all, what was his breaking point? The point where the fear of death overcame reason––and training.

  Unsighted now because of the last two bends and Hollis began to pump the brakes, taking care not to lock them up, watching the needle on the clock fall back. The final point of reference was a leaning road sign, half-hidden by ferns growing around the base of the rock wall.

  Seventy, sixty, fifty––and there it was! The parking bay came into the dipped headlights––and it was empty. Thank Christ! One of the unknowns had been the possibility of a tourist caravan spending the night there illegally. Finis.

  Forty.

  Hollis steered into the bay, hearing the wheels scrunch on the gravel surface. He hauled the steering wheel hard over and jerked up the handbrake lever. The Range Rover skidded into a perfect handbrake turn, spraying gravel in a surge onto and over the grass verge. A piece pinged off the metal mesh waste paper bin and cracked on the window beside Hollis' face.

  Forward traction again, increasing as the tyres cleared the gravel bed and bit into the road surface. Thirty, forty, fifty and into the first of the two bends leading to the straight section. Sixty, sixty five. Check the tail swing at the second bend, don’t over-compensate. Safely on the straight Hollis switched off all the lights, relying on the flitting moonlight for vision. Foot on the floor now, passing seventy on the clock and nothing to do but wait for the speed to build.

  Well then, had he judged the turnround correctly?

  A flickering headlight became visible ahead––lost one for sure. Darkening as they took the last turn. Everything was shaping up well enough. Just the lingering resonance along the nerves: twanging a lot––ignore.

  A big plus factor was that the Germans had no reason to suspect anything. They had lost his rear lights, but that must have been happening regularly at every bend. Hollis watched the needle rising in the moonlight, eighty now. Estimate their speed coming the other way about the same. Impact speed therefore about 160 if anything went wrong. Chances of survival: nil.

  Light getting brighter now, just a few seconds left and there was no point in worrying about the risk. You were dead before you were born and it didn't worry you then. The thing was to judge it for maximum shock value.

  It was quite a narrow road, designed to take a single lane in each direction, limited by the terrain and the close proximity of Loch Ness. This meant that if you were driving something as big as a Range Rover and kept to the middle of the road there wouldn't be room for anyone else.

  Eighty five.

  Hollis switched on full beam, plus the fogs and spots, and then hit the horn for additional scare-effect.

  The uneven pool of light from the undamaged headlamp was barely enough to illuminate the way through these damned corners: the black water alongside seemed to absorb the light effortlessly. Klaus was not given to letting his imagination run away with him, but it seemed at times as if they were racing into a black hole: from which nothing, not even light itself, could escape. At the most basic level of his psyche, he was terrified.

  Now that they were no longer sliding through sharp turns, Helga found the time to glance round at Uwe in the back seat. He was grinning with excitement, totally involved in the chase. Stupid, she thought, he's just a child: too inexperienced to understand the danger inherent in this wild plunge through the darkness. She was aware of the painfully powerful grip she was maintaining on the bulkhead in front of her, as if the strength of muscle and bone would be enough to save her if–– 'What's that?' she asked, squinting into the night. Something was there: in the darkness beyond the dim pool of light.

  The world exploded into screaming, shattering brightness.

  Helga shrieked, unnerving Klaus Ditmar even more. He was utterly blinded. The organism promptly panicked because it was no longer in control of its own destiny. No longer sure, indeed, whether it was still alive.

  Appalling levels of light and sound coming in terribly fast now from the empty void outside: time itself telescoping into instants. Deep in his mind, Klaus knew this had to be a vehicle coming at them out of the night. Out of nowhere.

  And it had to be Hollis.

  In the last seconds, Hollis saw the gray Volvo. It was well over towards the grass verge bordering the loch, already off line and wandering; the driver blinded, disoriented. Hollis applied very slight pressure to the wheel. Careful. At this speed it wouldn't take much to put him into the cliff and there wouldn't be much left to scrape together afterwards. The Range Rover blasted past the other car, the pressure wave from the slipstream applying an extra few pounds of lateral thrust just when it mattered most. The Volvo's nearside front wheel sliced into the shrub-covered embankment ...

  Brakes. Hollis cut the fog- and spotlights, their purpose served. Slowing. He was aware that his hands were damp and shaking a little on the wheel, heart pumping: normal stress reaction––ignore.

  Mirror: darkness.

  Helga screamed again as she felt the solid thump and the car slewed violently sideways, almost somersaulting before hitting the embankment a second time and becoming airborne. There was another crash beside her and something impacted her head. Consciousness flared and faded. Uwe, not wearing a seat-belt in the rear, had been thrown forward through the windscreen, one of his feet catching his sister on the way past.

  The Volvo crashed through the flimsy undergrowth, tumbling upright again, bouncing over the ploughed-up embankment into the cold, black waters of Loch Ness. Uwe Wrasse, his neck broken, fell forward over the front of the wrecked car. He felt nothing of the chill water that closed over his head. His last sensations were jumbled, confused. He was dimly conscious only of an expanding tunnel of light, before that, too, melted away into silent darkness.

  And then all thought stopped.

  14

  Saturday 17 August, 2013

  Greenside hated telephones.

  He looked again at the portly man wearing an expensive pinstripe suit speaking into a cellphone about the size of a cigarette packet. It was all there: nodding head, exaggerated arm movements, hand gestures: the whole thing. Couldn't these people understand just how moronic they appeared? Jabbering away and giving every impression to the world at large that they were talking to themselves? Ought to be locked up.

  And anyway, the damned things were so bloody insecure!

  Email, voicemail etc were only as secure as your password, as many a ‘celebrity’ had discovered. Hacking mobile phones had become an industry in its own right––even the Royal Family had found that out the hard way more than once. And of course Her Majesty’s Government could “request” whatever information they desired from the networks. There were no secrets on telephones––any kind of telephone.

  Which was why he was walking through the streets of London on this overcast, humid day in mid-August. Wedderman was becoming a little tiresome with this single-minded pursuit of the intangible. It wasn't that Greenside particularly disliked the Special Branch officer, but he considered him unimaginative and easily fixated––a typical policeman in other words. Harmless for the most part, but inclined to become a nuisance when they got a bee in their bonnet about something.

  Like this Hollis thing.

  It was an unfortunate fact of life, Greenside reflected, that Wedderman couldn't have picked a more devious and wraith-like adversary if he had spent a year trying. Special Branch hadn’t achieved a si
ngle positive step forward since that first meeting several weeks ago, despite their calling in every marker they owned. Greenside wasn't surprised: they simply didn't have the larger picture necessary to deal with an international player like Hollis. But like it or not, the ball was in their park and it was Special Branch heads that would roll if Hollis pulled the trigger.

  Greenside winced. An unfortunate analogy, but true nonetheless.

  However, there was no need to panic just yet. SIS maintained good relations with many of the world's top security agencies. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Several of them had found it necessary to cope with the aftermath of Hollis' business dealings, and there was a surprising amount of information tucked away in filing cabinets and computers around the world. Most of it circumstantial, little more than suspicions really, although once his staff had collated it all some interesting trends showed up. But still nothing that would pin their man down to a place or an identity.

  Until yesterday.

  It was the wind rocking the Range Rover that finally woke Mike Hollis. Not so much the movement of the car as the knife-like blast that entered through the slightly open window above his head. Shivering, he reached over and closed it before throwing off the green tartan rug covering him on the reclining seat. It wasn't the first time he had spent the night huddled in a car parked in the middle of nowhere: at least this one offered more room than some of the others in his experience.

  Still trembling slightly from the lingering effects of extreme stress, Hollis had carried on driving back to Inverness. His original plan had been to find a hotel in Thurso area, near to the Orkney ferry terminal at Scrabster. But it was far too late for that after the encounter with the Germans.

  He drove northwards across the Kessock Bridge, empty now of its usual daytime traffic. Only a few headlights disturbed his passage across the Black Isle to rejoin the A9 north of Dingwall. By this time he had decided his only option was to find somewhere out of the way and sleep in the car. Although with his system still drenched in adrenaline he doubted if he would get much of that.