by Chris Ryan
‘Yes,’ Terry murmured into his mike. ‘We see him. Over.’
He listened for a moment. ‘Understood, you are in position, over.’ He looked over his shoulder and raised one eyebrow.
Slater nodded, the anticipation was taut as a bowstring now.
‘Yes, good to go. Repeat, Neil is good to go. Over.’
Slater flexed his fingers, put on the dark glasses and the hat, picked up the briefcase, checked himself in the bathroom mirror, allowed Chris to give him the once-over, and nodded to the others.
‘Neil is go,’ came Terry’s calm report. ‘Repeat. Neil is go.’
Slater took the stairs rather than the lift, and left the hotel by a side door. Turning away from the Rue Molitor, swinging the briefcase as if it contained nothing more than a mobile phone, a packet of Gauloises and a copy of Paris-Match, he made his way up the Rue Chardon-Lagache. The impression he wanted to give was that of a man who had appointments to keep, but was in no great hurry to do so. It was Saturday, after all, and the sun was shining. He didn’t want to radiate midweek city-centre strain.
Ten minutes later, and feeling a little less knotted-up for his walk, Slater found himself once more on the Rue Molitor. He wasn’t being followed, of that he was certain. Nor, as far as he could see, did Fanon-Khayat have any kind of outlying security presence. If the French had a watcher team on him, then they were inside a building, and well concealed. The streets were residential, and all but empty. There were no roadworkers, no loitering telephone repair teams, no fat guys eating ham and cheese sandwiches in cars.
Outside the Café Michelange, their faces turned to the sunshine, Eve and Andreas stirred demi-tasses of hot chocolate. Eve was still wearing her watch, Slater saw – the signal that all was clear.
Slater’s hands found the packet of Gauloises and the Dupont lighter in his jacket pocket. Taking advantage of a hiatus in the traffic to cross the road, he placed a cigarette in his mouth, and pressed the button beside the entry-gates to the courtyard with his lighter. The judas-gate clicked off the latch, and Slater ducked and entered. Keeping his head low, flicking the lighter in front of his mouth as he walked and with his other hand shielding the flame, he crossed the smooth cobbles to a shadowed doorway. Up three steps, past the CCTV camera, and past a row of locked postboxes. Pinching out the cigarette, he slipped it into his jacket pocket and pulled on the gloves Chris had brought for him. The sign in front of him read ‘Ascenseur B’.
Cool it, Slater told himself. Breathe. You’re meeting a professional colleague for lunch. You have much to discuss. You’re looking forward to it. There will be BGs there but you will ignore them. You will submit politely — with an ironic smile, perhaps — to their search. You have nothing to hide.
You are expected, a Balkan desk-officer.
Your name is Neil Clissold.
The lift slow and grumbling, each floor sliding past. A lurch as it came to a halt. Six feet of polished parquet. A single large door. The bell sounding far inside, and with it Slater’s nerves lifting away, and a frozen calm descending.
Beyond the door-chain, a bodyguard with a face like a dumpling. Fatty jowls, suspicious eyes, and a gone-to-seed body in a shiny Adidas tracksuit. Beneath the zipped top, the cross-strap of a shoulder holster. From the interior of the flat, melancholy piano music.
‘Clissold,’ said Slater, removing his hat and placing the dark glasses in the top pocket of his jacket. ‘Je m’appelle Neil Clissold.’
The bodyguard nodded — maybe understanding him, maybe not – and unlatched the chain. Behind him, another suet-featured Balkan, this one toting a handgun, a heavy Tokarev 7.62 automatic. The weapon had a strip of Scotch tape across the end of the barrel – an old Soviet affectation intended to keep the weapon clean in wet weather. Blinking, and with all the confusion that he could manage, Slater placed the briefcase between his legs. Looking from man to man with a nervous smile, he half-raised his hands.
The first bodyguard indicated that he should turn and face the wall, and stand with hands braced against it. When Slater did so the bodyguard patted down his arms, chest and legs. Just as well, thought Slater, he wasn’t wearing one of the comms sets. Finally the bodyguard was satisfied, and stepped back. ‘Ouvre!’ he ordered, pointing at the briefcase. ‘Open!’
‘Moi?’ asked Slater idiotically, prompting a contemptuous exchange in Serbo-Croat between the guards.
‘You!’ said the guard with the Tokarev.
Slater pointed to a marble-topped sideboard, and the other man placed the briefcase on it. Sauntering up to it, Slater punched in the 1471 code. The briefcase sprang open. From the street below came the distant grumble of traffic.
The Sig Sauer was out of the briefcase and aimed at the first bodyguard’s face before the Serb fully comprehended what he had seen.
‘Drop it,’ ordered Slater. ‘Both of you. Guns on the floor.’
The bodyguard facing him slowly reached for his shoulder holster, a wary but professional acceptance of the situation showing in his eyes. Deliberately, Slater thumbed down the Sig Sauer’s safety-catch. In the interior of the apartment, the music played sadly on.
‘Any bollocks,’ he said, ‘and I’ll fucking shoot you. Comprenez?’
The bodyguard nodded, began very slowly to lift a handgun from his shoulder holster – but with his thumb and index finger only, in order to emphasise his non-hostile intentions.
The other guard was still uncertainly holding the Tokarev – wondering, Slater was sure, if he could get a shot in without hitting his colleague. Taking a fast sidestep, Slater lowered the Sig Sauer and squeezed off a single silenced round. With the impact the Tokarev and the Serb’s right thumb seemed to leap across the hallway to the carpet.
Hurriedly, the first bodyguard lowered his weapon to the floor. A Stechkin, Slater saw – another clunky Soviet relic. The second bodyguard was staring vacantly at his severed thumb. Blood from the trailing hand was pooling blackly among the carpet fibres beside his Nike cross-training shoe.
That knocked the fight out of the fucker, no error.
From the briefcase he took two pairs of plasticuffs, and handed them to the first – and now entirely compliant – bodyguard. With the Sig Sauer he gestured towards the bleeding man. ‘Cuff him,’ he said, pointing to his wrists and ankles. ‘Quickly!’
Carefully, as if providing him with medical care, the Serb helped his shocked colleague to the floor and handcuffed his hands and feet.
‘Now yourself,’ said Slater quietly, handing the Serb two more pairs of plasticuffs and waving the Sig Sauer in his face. ‘Move it! Vite!’ He was becoming increasingly anxious that Fanon-Khayat would appear before the guards were fully immobilised.
When both men were recumbent, he tightened the plasticuffs to their limit, took a roll of zinc-oxide tape from the briefcase, and wrapped it several times around their mouths. A blue cotton hood – originally a Church’s shoe-bag – was then fastened over each man’s head. Slater considered giving them a blast of Mace in the nose and eyes for good measure, but decided against it. They were adequately immobilised as things stood.
Two doors led off the hall. Carefully, Slater opened the left-hand one, which he calculated led to the room visible from the hotel opposite. The room was empty, and although fully decorated and well lit, appeared to be in use as a store-room. It held perhaps forty pieces of old furniture, all with labels attached. Moving a set of six upholstered chairs to one side, Slater returned to the hall, took the bodyguards by the collar and dragged them over the polished floor into the store-room. There, panting with the effort, he stowed them under a mahogany dining table. Noticing on the way out of the room that there was a key in the lock, he turned it and pocketed it.
Quickly, he straightened the hall.
Exhaling, Slater deliberately loosened his neck and shoulders. Keep switched on, he ordered himself as he quickly attached the Motorola to his belt and fitted the throat-mike and earpiece. Keep it tight.
‘Neil send. Do you
read me? Over.’
Nothing.
‘All stations, this is Neil. Do you read me? Over.’
Nothing again. Just hiss and blank air. The walls of the flat were too thick.
Taking the key from his pocket he let himself back into the store-room. This time the response was clear.
‘Eve to Neil – all clear, repeat, all clear. What is your situation? Over.’
‘Two hostiles immobilised. Now targeting Fanon-Khayat. Over and out.’
Move, he told himself. Get in, get the pictures, whack Fanon-Khayat, and get out. You’re wasting time.
Gun in one hand, briefcase in the other, he pushed open the door from the hall to the interior of the apartment. The volume of the music rose. Was Fanon-Khayat a piano-player? For some obscure reason Slater hoped not.
To his left an unlit corridor lined with framed paintings led into darkness; to his right, illuminated by tall windows, the same corridor curved round the side of the building. In front of him was a half-open door.
Slater moved left-handed, along the unlit corridor. A worn but elegant Persian runner covered most of the floor, effectively muffling his footsteps. In his ear the miniature receiver had gone dead again.
Carefully, Slater tried the end door. It opened into another store-room. Racks held several dozen dusty bottles of wine, and shelves held bound editions of periodicals, maps and books about antiques. A single unshaded bulb hung from the ceiling, and directly beneath it, on the uncarpeted parquet flooring, a foldaway canvas bed had been erected. An orange sleeping-bag lay half-unzipped on this, as did two overnight bags with crumpled clothing spilling out of them, a couple of German or possibly Dutch pornographic magazines, a gold-plated identity bracelet, a half-empty bottle of slivovitz, and an opened carton of Balkan cigarettes. Over all of this hung the odour of stale masculinity – of dirty socks, sealed windows, unwashed armpits and sperm.
Serbian bodyguard quarters, thought Slater, quickly slipping out again. Unappetising even by the generally low standards of Balkan paramilitary hygiene.
The next room held paintings – scores of them, stacked against the wall – and a few small furniture pieces. Chandeliers and stacks of china plates lay in open-topped cardboard boxes. They must be on their way to the auction-rooms, thought Slater. Fanon-Khayat must be realising his assets. Again, the floor was bare, but this time the room was untenanted, and the smell was the lavendered smell of old possessions – of furniture-polish, varnish and dust.
A spare bedroom next. Doubling, guessed Slater, as a dressing room for Branca Nikolic, Fanon-Khayat’s twenty-something Serbian bride. A wardrobe stood half-open on a garish Mexican carpet and Slater caught a glimpse of cellophaned dry-cleaning and expensive-looking shoe-boxes. Tacked to the watered-silk wall were posters of Madonna, Geri Halliwell and a couple whom Slater recognised as the assassinated warlord Arkan Raznatovic and his pop-star wife Svetlana ‘Ceca’ Velickovic. Arkan and Ceca’s magic-markered signatures had been scrawled across their portrait.
Exiting, Slater crept past the half-open door of the drawing-room, from which – to Slater’s relief – the music still poured. That, certainly, was where Fanon-Khayat would be waiting. And waiting impatiently, if Slater didn’t get a move on. He would know Slater was here, and he would expect the bodyguards’ search to take a few minutes. The desire to appear in control of the situation would lead him to wait until the bodyguards showed him in, calculated Slater, but there were limits. Much longer and he’d come out and see what the hold-up was.
The first room in the right-hand corridor was the Fanon-Khayats’ bedroom, decorated in orientalist style with hanging lamps and drapes. Hurrying in, quickly sweeping the place with the Sig Sauer, Slater checked the dressing area and the gold-accessorised en-suite bathroom. Empty.
A further spare bedroom. Empty.
A second bodyguard hutch. The magazines about martial arts and attack-dogs this time, as well as the inevitable wank-mags. A shell-suit on a wire hanger. The smell the same.
Slater and Fanon-Khayat, it seemed, were alone.
Placing the Sig Sauer out of sight behind the briefcase, Slater hurried back up the corridor and stepped into the drawing-room. It was vast, panelled and flooded with dusty light. Huge abstract canvases shared the walls with crumbling tapestries. Invisible fingers raced up and down the keyboard of an invisible Steinway grand piano. The source of the music was a quartet of loudspeakers shaped like nautilus shells.
Antoine Fanon-Khayat looked older than his half-century of years, and a Lacoste tennis shirt and Versace jeans did nothing to mitigate this impression. He was also balder than he had appeared in Manderson’s presentation — his remaining locks combed with unconvincing bravado across a billiard-ball scalp.
Smiling, the arms-dealer had risen from an armchair and half-crossed the room by the time that he realised something was very wrong, that the man with the briefcase had not been shown in by the bodyguards – indeed, that there was no sign of the bodyguards.
‘Mr Clissold . . .’ he began uncertainly, his hand still outstretched.
Slater revealed the Sig Sauer. Seeing it, Fanon-Khayat seemed to crumple, to shrink inside his expensive leisurewear. His hand fell tiredly to his side.
‘You know exactly what I want,’ said Slater levelly. ‘I want those pictures. This gun is silenced, I’ve already used it on those idle shitbags in the lobby, I’m happy to use it again. So get the pictures – the disc – now.’
‘I thought we were . . . going to discuss a deal.’ Fanon-Khayat looked sulky and disappointed, but not yet truly afraid.
‘I’ll give you a deal,’ said Slater, casually bringing up the Sig Sauer, aiming, and reducing a portrait-bust on a plinth to a shower of shattered clay. ‘Those pictures against your life.’ He turned the Sig Sauer back towards his quarry.
Fanon-Khayat looked at the pottery shards dispassionately. His eyes flickered. ‘You’ve come from Ridley?’
Mentally, Slater reeled. He knew Ridley’s name? In that case he probably knew what Ridley’s department did. And what Slater had come to do. What else did he know?
‘I’ve come from London.’
‘For the pictures.’
‘Where are they?’
Fanon-Khayat tentatively ran his fingers through his thinning hair. ‘Suppose they’re not here?’
This was bad, thought Slater. This had to be turned around, and fast. He lowered the gun and took a step back.
‘Look, Mr Fanon-Khayat, make it easy for yourself. You know who I am, you know where I come from, you know we don’t fuck about. Just give us the disk and I’ll be off.’
‘And if I refuse?’
He knows, thought Slater. He knows what I’m here to do. Knows he has nothing to lose by refusing to cooperate.
‘Have you heard of the Ustashe, Mr . . . Clissold?’
Slater stared at him, not listening, wondering how to proceed. Shooting him in the hand or leg would probably put Fanon-Khayat into shock and accomplish nothing. Threatening to hit him might bring some focus to the situation – most people were frightened of being hit. He took a step forward, and Fanon-Khayat visibly cowered.
‘The Ustashe were a Croatian army, Mr Clissold, who joined forces with the occupying Nazis during the last war, and turned on their neighbours, the Serbs. An army whose crimes equalled for sheer horror anything the Nazis themselves committed. They executed Serbs with knives, with saws, with—’
‘History later,’ said Slater, ignoring him. ‘The disc now.’
‘History cannot wait much longer, Mr Clissold. And there are many copies of the disc. Destroying this one would accomplish nothing.’
Slater was not going to be drawn into an argument. Besides, he was certain that Fanon-Khayat was bluffing – Manderson’s calculation was that he would not have made copies for fear of devaluing his original.
‘The disc now,’ he repeated, raising his voice.
At that moment the door re-opened. His heart sinking, Slater recognised Branca Nik
olic. From the duty-free bags in her hands he guessed that she had just come in from Charles de Gaulle airport. She was wearing an ankle-length pink chiffon coat and white trainers and her pretty, spoilt face looked tired.
Sprinting across the room, Slater grabbed her before her husband had a chance to speak. Gagging her with one hand and wrenching her head backwards, he held the Sig Sauer to her throat. She whimpered, began to shake in his arms.
‘Please . . .’ said Fanon-Khayat. ‘She—’
‘The disc now!’ Slater shouted, jabbing the silencer up beneath her jaw. ‘Or I’ll shoot her in front of you. I’ll blow her fucking throat out.’
Visibly distressed, Fanon-Khayat raised his hands, crossed the room to the massive fireplace and reached for a carved roundel on one of the side columns. The wooden disc, some nine inches in diameter, turned smoothly beneath his hands. Once removed, it revealed a small barrel-safe with a combination lock. A moment later the circular steel door swung open. From the interior of the safe Fanon-Khayat removed a CD in a flat plastic case. His hands were shaking badly now.
‘Please, Mr Clissold,’ he begged quietly. ‘Please. Let her go. She doesn’t know anything about—’
‘Stay where you are,’ said Slater. ‘Tell the girl to bring the disc over here to me.’
Fanon-Khayat spoke to his wife in halting Serbian, and she nodded.
Slater released her, wiping her saliva from his hand on to his trousers. As she stepped backwards away from him her eyes widened. At the fireplace Fanon-Khayat froze. Slater had time to half-turn, to catch a blurred glimpse of a descending arm, and then – simultaneously – a sick crunch, a whipcrack of white light, and the enfolding bloom of darkness.
TEN
Slater woke in darkness. His hands were cuffed behind his back, there was blood in his mouth, and the pain in his head was so great that he retched. It was as if a spiked cannonball was rolling in his skull, crushing nerves and bone as it went. His eyes, too, were in agony – seared by the glare of that phosphorescent impact.
He gagged up an acid, throat-rasping gob of bile. It smeared sourly around his face, mingled with the metallic blood-smell. He was lying face-down, he realised. Was he in bed?
