by Matthew Hall
Black stared out of the window across the garden and saw a pair of crows at the far end of the overgrown lawn tearing at the remains of a dead pigeon. They were cunning and resourceful creatures but pitiless hunters. He had seen them peck the eyes out of sick lambs. Black hated cruelty as much as he hated dishonesty. He had hoped never to inflict any again.
It was a fine ideal.
He opened the cupboard beneath the sink and pulled away the loose panel that shrouded the pipes. Behind it was the Glock. His visitor had added three boxes of ammunition, a bone-handled Bowie knife and a double-sided shoulder holster. Black brought the knife out into the light thinking that he recognized it.
He did. Every nick and scratch.
He hadn’t seen it since Helmand. He and Finn had sneaked up on a Taliban sniper in hostile territory and found themselves confronted with six men camped out on a mud roof. Having gunshots ring out wasn’t an option that would have ended with them escaping alive. Other men would have urged a quiet retreat. Not Finn. They had waited silently until all but two of them were asleep before vaulting the parapet and silencing all six within seconds.
Black recalled the sensation of hot blood running over his hand and the animal thrill of the assassin. He had never been more alive and less human than on that night.
23
It was noon on Saturday and the hottest day of the year. The air con in the rented Ford transit needed regassing. Even on full power the vents were pumping out air no cooler than the eighty-five degrees outside the closed windows. Sweat trickled down Black’s spine, soaking through the short-sleeved shirt he wore beneath a high-vis vest. Several days’ growth of thick, dark stubble and a pair of mirrored wrap-around sunglasses served as a basic but effective disguise. He was just another van driver enduring the London traffic.
He was travelling eastwards along Holland Park Avenue in west London, approaching the point at the top of the rise where it merged into Notting Hill Gate. The traffic slowed to a crawl and came to a stop. Roadworks had combined to make this stretch even more tortuous than usual. He took a slug of water from a plastic bottle and fought an overpowering temptation to abort. He hadn’t felt fear so physically since his very first missions in Bosnia: parachuting by night deep into Serb-controlled territory to take out artillery positions. Now, like then, the object of his dread was not the dangers that lay ahead but his ability to meet them. He felt trapped in a fallible body unequal to the task.
He crept forward by painful inches until finally he passed the Tube station. His destination was the second turning on the left – Linden Gardens, a leafy circular cul-de-sac which he had already recced twice since Tuesday. The lights up ahead flicked to green and the queue of cars ahead of him began to move. He indicated to make the turn, feeling his heart pounding against the inside of his ribs.
He drove clockwise at walking pace around the Gardens, waiting for the adrenalin surge to pass. Slowly, he felt his body coming back to something approaching equilibrium. The street was quiet, the residents still recovering from their eighty-hour weeks. Five-storey stucco-fronted terraces that had once been crammed with low-rent bedsits were now home to wealthy young bankers and lawyers with no lives of their own but more money than they knew how to spend. The kind too caught up in themselves to take much notice of what was going on outside their front doors. The anonymous van, identical to a million others, passed by unnoticed.
Black’s target, thirty-four-year-old Max Quinn, occupied a flat on the third floor of the only modern building in the street: a rectangular 1960s construction with a small garden separating it from the road and a driveway to its left side leading to a car park behind. During his first recce Black had spotted the CCTV cameras covering the car park and was keen not to use it. He was in luck: a midnight-blue Maserati Quattroporte pulled out of a space almost directly outside the block as he approached. It was a tight squeeze that left no room to open the van’s rear doors, but in anticipation he had selected a model with an additional door that slid open along its side and which was now facing the pavement.
The block had a secure lobby, the locked door to which could be buzzed open via a video intercom connected to each apartment. Additional security was provided by a porter who occupied a ground-floor flat at the rear of the building. An internet search had produced estate agents’ particulars of a recently sold apartment on the first floor that had included the helpful detail that the porter worked weekdays only. This had provided Black with the most obvious route in. He pulled on a navy baseball cap and stuffed a roll of duct tape along with several plastic cable ties into the pockets of his vest. From the passenger seat he picked up a heavy eighteen-inch-square package carefully wrapped in plastic and addressed to Mr Max Quinn, Flat 8B, Linden House, along with a clipboard bearing a delivery note for signature.
Black approached the front door of the building and pressed the buzzer for Quinn’s flat. There was no answer. He tried a second time, this time for a full five seconds.
A hungover voice crackled over the intercom speaker. ‘Yes?’
Holding up the box so that it could be seen by the camera, Black said, ‘Courier. I’ve got a package for Mr Quinn, 8B.’
‘Oh, right,’ Quinn mumbled. ‘Leave it with the porter round the side. He’ll take it.’ His accent was pure public school – privileged and complacent. Typical MI5. Just like the army, the Service seemed forever doomed to recruit in its own image.
‘Sorry, sir. Can’t leave this one with a third party; needs your signature. Sender’s instructions.’
There was a brief silence, which Black interpreted as the spy’s instincts stirring to life. Agents of the Security Services were rigorously trained in the dangers of abduction and assassination, hence their preference for residences such as this one that offered several lines of defence.
‘I’ve got a deliver or return on this, sir. What would you like me to do?’ Black said impatiently.
‘Who’s it from? Does it say?’
Black fumbled with the package and the clipboard and made sure Quinn got a good view of him scanning the delivery note. ‘Here we go. Mr Michael Hamden.’
An email exchange with Towers had established that ‘Hamden’ was the official alias of Quinn’s line manager, a fact which would be known only to a small circle inside their department.
‘All right. Come on up,’ Quinn said with a weary note of resignation. A delivery from the boss on a Saturday morning could only mean unwelcome work.
Black rode up to the third floor in the lift, and as he stepped out on to the carpeted landing he speed-dialled a number he had preset on his phone. It was no more than six paces to Quinn’s front door. Quinn opened it on a sturdy security chain. His face was puffy and his body out of shape. He was wearing shorts and a crumpled T-shirt and looked as if he had met the dawn in a West End casino. From somewhere inside the flat a phone started to ring. Quinn glanced over his shoulder with a puzzled expression. Hopefully, he would assume it was his boss letting him know about the delivery.
‘There you go, sir,’ Black said, passing the clipboard through the narrow gap afforded by the chain. ‘Leave it here, shall I?’ He nodded to the floor outside the door as Quinn scribbled his signature.
‘Yeah, that’s fine.’ The phone continued to ring behind him. He passed the clipboard out as Black straightened from setting the box down.
‘Cheers.’ Black smiled and turned back towards the lift, hearing the flat door close behind him.
If Quinn was any sort of professional, he would answer the call before collecting the package. Black reached out his phone and ended it before Quinn could answer. He stopped and stepped back towards the flat, pressed close to the wall. He waited while Quinn called back the mobile phone number that had just attempted to reach him. It would ring four times and deliver a message which Black had recorded using text to speech software. An automated female voice would announce: ‘Your package will be delivered by Stephen between 12.05 and 12.15 p.m. today. Thank you.’
Silent seconds passed. Black heard footsteps approach along the hall and the sound of the catch being pulled back. Repeating a drill he had rehearsed a thousand times before, he stepped in front of the door, drew his right knee up to his chest and stamped heel first with his whole bodyweight, sending a startled Quinn sprawling backwards on to the floor.
‘Don’t move,’ Black said quietly while drawing the Glock from its holster. He levelled it at Quinn’s chest and pulled the door closed behind him. ‘I’ll be asking you some questions today, Mr Quinn, about who you’ve been associating with. It’s going to take a little while to get where we’re going, so you’ll have time to reconcile yourself to telling the truth. Do you understand?’
Quinn stared up at him with wide frozen eyes, his lips parted in an expression of disbelief.
‘On your front, please. Hands behind your back.’ Black spoke quietly and matter-of-factly.
Quinn stared at the gun, then did as he was told.
Holstering the Glock, Black crouched, forced his right knee hard into the small of Quinn’s back and fastened his wrists behind his tailbone with three cable ties.
‘Who sent you?’ Quinn said, wincing as Black drew the ties tight.
‘Hamden.’
‘Am I under arrest?’
‘We’ll discuss your status later.’
There was a sound of movement from behind a door at the end of the hallway.
‘Who’s that?’
Quinn didn’t answer.
Black pressed a knuckle into the side of his neck, finding the pressure point beneath his ear. Quinn exclaimed in pain.
‘Who?’
‘A girl.’
‘Friend of yours?’
‘No.’
‘I see.’
Black let him go, snatched the duct tape from his pocket, wound it twice around his ankles and left him trussed on the floor while he went in search of the girl.
He pushed open the bedroom door and entered the darkened interior that smelled of sweat, stale perfume and alcohol. A black dress and underwear hung over a chair. A tangle of sheets lay in the centre of a bed. A young woman with pretty Slavic features was crouching behind it. High cheekbones and ice-blue eyes. She was naked and clutching a phone in front of her bare breasts like a miniature shield.
‘Put it down, please.’
She stared back at him like a mistrustful child, refusing to let it go.
‘Now.’ He gestured for her to place it on the bed.
She remained motionless.
There was no time for games. He stepped towards her. At the same moment she sprang up and scrambled over the bed towards the door. Black shot out a hand and grabbed her slender arm above the elbow. She let out a scream, leaving him no choice but to press his other hand over her mouth and force her on to the mattress. Terrified, she fell silent, let go of the phone and curled, quivering, into a foetal position. He grabbed it from the crumped bedclothes and bent it double between his fists and tossed it aside. Broken shards of glass scattered across the sheets. The girl let out a sob. Battling a wave of revulsion, Black cable-tied her wrists and ankles and taped her mouth with two strips of duct tape. Mute and helpless she looked up at him pleadingly.
‘I’m sorry. You won’t be here long.’ He tugged the sheet out from beneath her and covered her nakedness.
It was the least he could do.
He turned to the wardrobe, slid open the doors and from beneath a neat pile of tailored shirts folded in their laundry wrappers dug out an old hooded sweat top. In among an expensive collection of shoes he found a pair of trainers. He gathered them up and took them through to the hall. As he closed the door, he apologized once again to the girl.
Collateral damage. Ends and means. It never got any easier.
Quinn offered no resistance as Black removed the tape from his ankles, hauled him to his feet and pulled the hoodie over his head. No doubt the young spy had, as intended, concluded that a well-spoken middle-class intruder could only be part of some elaborate training exercise. Black was more than happy to encourage the delusion. It would make the shock of what was to come later all the more effective.
They made their way down to the ground floor using the internal fire escape. Quinn remained silent. Hungover and without the use of his arms his full attention was focused on maintaining his balance. Black walked behind him, the hot stale air in the windowless staircase reminding him of so many others down which he had escorted men at gunpoint. If Quinn had even a lingering fear that his detention was genuine, he gave little sign of it. As they crossed the empty lobby, a trace of arrogant self-assurance returned to his pampered features. He moved at his own unhurried pace and paused for a moment, making Black wait like an attentive servant as he held the door to the outside open for him. Black let it pass. He had always believed in treating prisoners with dignity until the moment at which that was no longer possible.
They left the building and approached the van. ‘You’ll be travelling in the back, I’m afraid. You may find it a little warm. Can’t be helped.’
Black opened the locks with a click of the key fob, waited for a Filipina nanny pushing a toddler in a buggy to pass, then climbed into the back with Quinn, before sliding the door nearly closed again.
‘On your knees, please.’
Quinn sighed, tiring of the game. The first sign of resistance.
‘I won’t ask you again.’
Quinn turned his back to the boarded side of the van and slid down to the floor in a seated position.
‘I said knees.’
‘What difference does it make?’
‘Please do as I say, Mr Quinn.’
‘Or what? Are you going to kill me?’ He glanced up with a cocky, mocking smile.
Black kicked him sharply in the side of his left thigh. Quinn convulsed with the sudden shock of the pain, gasping through gritted teeth. Working quickly and without emotion, Black hauled him, still grimacing, on to his front, grabbed the roll of duct tape from his waistcoat pocket, pulled his head back from the floor and wrapped tape twice around his neck and jaw, covering his mouth. Quinn writhed and kicked out as panic took hold. Black let go of his head, thrust a knee into the back of his thighs, caught hold of his thrashing ankles and bound them tightly together.
Quinn’s breath came in short, terrified bursts. Defenceless and unable to move or breathe through his mouth, he would feel like a drowning man. Black took a length of nylon tow rope from a small holdall in which he had stowed his few necessary pieces of equipment and secured Quinn’s legs to one of the metal anchors welded to the van’s internal struts.
‘Try to relax.’
Quinn looked round at him with wide, desperate eyes that seemed to be fast approaching the edge of consciousness. He had succumbed to panic and in all likelihood would hyperventilate to the point of passing out for a short while. He would then wake and the cycle would repeat itself several more times before his body’s supplies of adrenalin were finally exhausted. Each time, it would feel like dying all over again.
Black felt a fleeting measure of pity, which was quickly displaced by a mental image of Finn’s mutilated body. Forty stab wounds in marble-white skin. He reached back into the holdall and brought out one of two cotton laundry bags he had bought from a homeware stall in Oxford’s covered market. One was printed with sunflowers, the other with poppies. He pulled the sunflowers over Quinn’s head and secured the drawstring behind his neck. He looked faintly ridiculous but it saved Black having to look at his face.
Quinn’s breathing became even more frantic. Patches of bitter-smelling perspiration appeared through his clothes. It wouldn’t be long now. Black waited, crouching on his haunches, watching his prisoner’s lungs work faster and faster until they weren’t so much inhaling and exhaling, as vibrating multiple times each second. Then, at last, he took one deep, desperate gasp of air before his body tensed, became rigid and fell slack. Black leaned forward and listened. He was still breathing, slowly but steadily, his body’s li
fe-support system gradually resetting the balance of gases in his blood.
He was a young man. He’d live.
Black stepped out on to the pavement, slid the door closed and made his way around to the cab. The street was still empty. No one had seen their neighbour abducted in broad daylight, and even if they had, he suspected that most would simply have looked the other way. Every rich man for himself. He climbed behind the wheel, brought out his phone and sent an encrypted text to Towers instructing him to send someone to come and see to the girl. ‘And maybe pay her something for her trouble?’ he added as a postscript. He felt sorry for her.
He started the engine and headed west for his next pick-up.
So far so good. He had surprised himself.
Four years without practice and he hadn’t lost his touch.
24
Freddy Towers’ briefing notes described Elliot Clayton as thirty-five years old, six feet two inches tall and of muscular build. His English father and American mother were both retired college professors. He had studied history and politics at Cambridge and completed a PhD on the evolution of modern terrorism at Princeton where he had continued his passions for rugby and boxing. His tap on the shoulder had come from the British consul in New York during a summer internship. Genuine Anglo-Americans able to pass themselves off as a native on both sides of the Atlantic were a surprisingly rare breed, it seemed. Rarer still were those of high intelligence who weren’t intent on a strictly mercenary career. Clayton had been sufficiently flattered by the approach to lend his intellectual gifts to the British Security Services. This alone had been enough to raise Towers’ suspicions. What sort of man gives up the chance of riches to work for HM Government? he had added in longhand. Must have a kink. ‘Kink’, in Towers’ parlance, could mean anything from a preference for suede shoes to an extreme sexual fetish.
