In my mind, two pennies dropped simultaneously; I couldn’t handle both so I let one roll on the floor for a while.
‘He’s read the script,’ I said. Miles stared at me. ‘Think about it,’ I told him. ‘He’s asked for ten million sterling. He wants it deposited in a secure bank account for onward transfer. Straight out of the Snatch script.’
‘Surely he couldn’t be that arrogant?’ Prim asked.
‘What’s arrogant about it? He didn’t expect to be identified as Stu Queen; not after removing all those happy family snapshots. He didn’t reckon on Uncle Joe putting one over on him.’
‘Okay, Oz,’ said Miles. ‘Maybe you’re right; maybe this guy is using our own plot against him. But he’s got Dawn for real.
‘Can you send the first reply message like he says, Prim?’ he asked.
‘Sure.’
‘Then do it. Give him his “Yes”. I’ll call my accountant and tell him to make the transfer to the Lugano Bank, code word “Elanore”.’ He took out a cellphone, punched in a short-code number, and barked those instructions to the person who answered.
When he was finished he nodded to Prim. There was a small box beside the message labelled ‘reply’. She clicked it, typed the single word into the new window which appeared, then re-established the connection with the service provider and pressed the ‘send’ symbol. ‘Message sent successfully’ appeared on screen a second or two later.
‘Done,’ she pronounced. ‘Now. We’ve got twenty-four hours to find him.’
‘Why?’ Miles asked, grimly. ‘Because you think he’s going to kill Dawn anyway?’
I could tell from the sudden flicker of fright which crossed her face that that possibility hadn’t occurred to her. I answered for her. ‘No. Why should he do that? Stephen’s planning his early retirement on your money. If he kills Dawn, then he will never have a moment’s peace anywhere in the world, for he will know for sure that the three of us will hunt him down, literally to the ends of the earth.’
‘Oh yeah. How would we do that? Where would we even start?’
‘Well for openers, he’s got a mother. In those circumstances I’d put the thumbscrews on her myself for any clue to where he might have gone. No, this is his big play. Killing Dawn would be stupid, and stupid this boy ain’t.’
‘Okay, so where’s the clever bastard hiding my wife.’
‘Go into the script again,’ said Prim. ‘What happens in the movie, when Dawn’s kidnapped?’
Miles frowned. ‘Nelson Reed takes her to an abandoned offshore oil platform. Donn’s not going to follow the plot that closely; that really would be stupid.’
‘I agree with you that he wouldn’t take her to that place. Think of this, though; when you send him the code word, Dawn will be out of his hands for forty-eight hours while he makes his getaway. “Fed and watered”, he said. But not able to contact anyone, surely, not able to raise the alarm and set us on his trail before he’s got where he’s going. He won’t leave an accomplice to guard her; that wouldn’t make sense. So he must be holding her where he believes she can be left safely alone for that length of time.
‘Somewhere the buses don’t run. Somewhere the postman doesn’t call. An uninhabited island?’
A third penny dropped; this time I picked it up. ‘No. A rig after all; but not that one. Prim, Pep Newton hardly told us anything about Donn that we didn’t know before, but there was one fact, wasn’t there?’
She nodded. ‘He worked offshore, the Middle East, out of Singapore, out of Rotterdam.’
I didn’t wait for a reply; instead I took out my mobile phone and called Dylan, on Susie’s number. He answered the phone, sleepily. ‘Mike, it’s me.’
‘’cking Hell, Oz. Do you know what time it is?’
‘It’s countdown time,’ I snapped at him, excited. ‘The money’s in place, code word Dawn’s mum’s name, and now we’ve got twenty-four hours before we give it to him and he scoots. I need you to check something now. I want a list of abandoned gas or oil production platforms in the southern part of the North Sea, including, in particular, the Dutch sector. I need it now.’
‘Okay. Keep your phone switched on.’ The drowsiness had gone from his voice.
Miles was frowning at me. ‘You think . . .?’
‘It’s not just our best shot, man. It’s our only shot.’
‘But how the hell would he get her on to a rig? He’d need a chopper, assuming he could fly one, and they don’t leave those lying around, do they?’
It was one of those rare moments when two people realise the same truth at exactly the same time. We stood there staring at each other, open-mouthed. Prim must have thought we were idiots, but then she hadn’t seen the open-air studio set, or the real Jet Ranger parked on the mock helipad.
Chapter 51
The night security guard on the studio gate looked at us doubtfully; Prim, Miles and me in the Freelander. ‘I don’t know, sir,’ he said, peering at us from his shelter at the main gate, taking care not to step out into the heavy autumn rain.
‘My orders are not to let anyone in once the lot’s closed, you see. No one at all.’
Miles wound down the rear window. ‘Not even me?’ he asked, grinning.
‘Gawd,’ the man exclaimed. ‘I didn’t recognise you in this light, Mr Grayson. I suppose it’s all right for you to go in.’
‘Thanks,’ the mega-star replied. He waved his bare left wrist at the man. ‘It’s a bad sign when you start leaving fifty grand Rolexes in your dressing room.’
‘Want me to get it for you, sir?’ the second guard called from within the hut.
‘That’s okay. You stay here in the dry. I need to pick up some papers as well.’
‘Very good, Mr Grayson.’ The first guard raised the barrier and Prim drove through the gateway. I glanced into the back seat and saw Miles slip his watch back on to his wrist. The studio was the size of a large village, and laid out as such, with pavement walkways and street lighting. The rain slashed through the car’s headlight beams as I gave Prim directions to the big outdoor set. She drove slowly and carefully, and so it was over two minutes before we turned the last corner and saw the outline of the massive, mocked up oil platform.
Huge tarpaulins were lashed across its open side, giving some protection from the driving rain, but we had no interest in the substructure of the thing. All that we could do was stare up at the deck, and at the empty helipad.
‘Shit!’ Miles whispered. ‘The son-of-a-bitch is a pilot.’
‘Or he has a pilot with him,’ Prim suggested.
I pointed to the side of the set, where the road ran closest to it. A dark shape was parked, there, squat and chunky. ‘Drive us over there, love.’
She pulled up behind the vehicle, a medium-sized LDV truck with plain panelled sides. I jumped out into the rain and tried the back doors; they swung open, and I stepped up and into the space, crouching as I went. The beams of the Freelander lit up the compartment. At first, I thought it was empty, until I saw the line which ran down its back wall. Keeping my shadow out of the way, I touched the blue painted structure and felt it move beneath my fingers. It was a sliding door; I moved it out of the way, to reveal a second cabin, tiny, but big enough to take a passenger . . . as it had. The floor was padded with carpeting, folded over three times to give some cushioning against the hard floor; there was a ring, welded to the back wall, and from it there hung a chain with, on the end, a studded leather dog collar.
‘Bastard!’ I hissed, picturing Dawn tethered inside the truck. I felt my teeth clenched tightly together as I looked at the floor of the truck again. Half of the secret cubicle was in darkness and so I groped around in it, wishing I had had the brains to bring a torch. My hands bumped against something rough. I picked it up; a length of rope, knotted tightly, but cut through cleanly with a blade. I fitted the severed ends together, and judged that the loop which it formed would have secured a small person’s ankles. I pressed myself back into the dark side of the co
mpartment, allowing in as much of the bright halogen light as possible, looking for other, more ominous signs - like blood - but, to my relief, finding none.
I jumped out of the van and back into the Freelander. I was still holding the rope; I passed it into the back seat. ‘No doubt about it,’ I said. ‘Dawn was there. It’s an abduction vehicle, purpose-built.’
Miles rubbed the hemp against the stubble of his chin, with real anguish on his face. Then his eyes hardened again, ‘Prim. Take us to the production office. There’s some stuff there I want to check.’ He snapped out directions. ‘First right, second left, then look for a two-storey half-timbered house with a small garden in front.
‘I wasn’t thinking earlier, Oz, when you called Mike. We don’t need him to pinpoint disused North Sea platforms. I researched that when I was planning this project; the report’s in my files.’
Prim drove a bit more quickly this time; she found the office which looked like a house in under a minute. Miles fumbled with a bunch of keys as we ran up the short drive. He unlocked the door then threw the light switch and ran upstairs, with us on his heels.
He led us straight into one of the upper rooms, which was furnished with a desk, a bar, a few chairs, and a wooden filing cabinet. He slid the top drawer open and flicked through folders, quickly. ‘Gotcha, you beaut,’ he hissed, lapsing unconsciously into broad Aussie, as he pulled one out.
He scanned the document which was stitched inside, then handed it to me. I was going to read it, until he spoke.
‘Like I thought, the advance team came up with three possibilities: the one we chose in the end, one in the Norwegian sector, and a third, known as Beta platform, in Dutch waters. Logistically that was by far the best option; it was the easiest to reach and service, and the weather was guaranteed better. But technically, it wasn’t what we were looking for. We did a recce and decided that it just didn’t look the part, so we opted for the location off Aberdeen.’
‘Does it have a helipad?’
‘Of course.’
‘Could we fly over it and see if there’s a chopper there now?’
‘No, that wouldn’t tell us for sure. The platform has a hangar; it could have been rolled in there.’
He looked at us, from one to the other. ‘What do you think?’
‘It’s all we’ve got,’ Prim replied, voicing my thoughts word for word. ‘But we have to bring in the police, especially since the platform’s in Dutch coastal waters. If we’re going to rescue Dawn unharmed, we’re going to need a specialist assault team.’
‘We’ve got one,’ Miles growled. His eyes were slits; at that moment he didn’t look a bit like any face I’d ever seen on a movie poster. ‘I never told you guys, but when I was a youngster, before I got into this business, I was in the Australian Marines; special forces. I don’t use it in my publicity; I don’t even talk about it, because some of the things we did wouldn’t stand looking into.
‘I know how to get on to that rig, and I know what to do when I get there.’
‘Miles,’ Prim protested. ‘That’s crazy. You can’t stage a frontal assault on the thing, on your own.’
‘I sure can. But maybe I won’t have to. You’re a diver, aren’t you, Oz.’
I nodded. ‘You know I am. I dived a lot when I was in my teens and early twenties. And I still go down now and again when we’re in Spain.’
‘Ever done any wreck diving?’
‘Of course I have. The Firth of Forth’s full of the bloody things.’ I knew what was coming. ‘Hold on a minute though. Prim’s right. You and I can’t run a private rescue mission, in foreign territory, or anywhere else for that matter.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘We’ve still got twenty-two hours to play with, before you have to e-mail the code word. If we go to the police now, with what we have, they can stage the rescue.’
Miles shook his head, firmly. ‘What do you know about the Dutch special forces? Nothing. What do you know about the British? Only that when they go in they go in shooting. That’s if they didn’t spend all the time we have arguing about jurisdiction. There’s a better than even chance they’d botch it.
‘Tell me this straight. What do you think this guy would do if he was cornered?’
He had me there. ‘I think there’s a pretty fair chance he’d kill Dawn.’
‘And if we do nothing, if we let him take the money and run, can you give me a cast-iron guarantee that he won’t kill her anyway?’
‘You know I can’t.’
‘Then will you help me?’
‘Miles . . .’
There was a long silence, until at last his eyes softened. ‘Listen,’ he said, softly, ‘your Prime Minister is a buddy of mine . . . or he likes to think he is. If I call him, and get his personal okay on what we plan to do, with the proviso that if anything does go wrong, they take the bastard out as soon as he lifts off in that chopper . . . if I do that, will you come with me?’
I couldn’t say no, could I? Well, maybe I could have, but when it comes right down to it, I’m as crazy as him. ‘Okay,’ I agreed. Prim said nothing; she just glared at the two of us.
‘That’s what we do then. I’ll make the call right now; it could take a while to get through to him, so in the meantime, why don’t you guys go back and talk to the two stooges on the gate. Get them to tell you how come they let Stephen Donn in last night, but didn’t log him out.’
‘Right. And I’ll get them to confirm that there was only him in the driver’s cab.’
‘Could there have been a helicopter pilot hidden in the back, with Dawn?’
‘No way. You couldn’t have got Danny de Vito in there with her.’
I was in the doorway, and Miles had his hand on the phone, when I remembered that penny, the other one that had dropped earlier, only I’d neglected to pick it up. ‘Hey,’ I asked. ‘Do you have the shooting schedule here for the whole project? A file that shows who’s due where on what days?’
‘Sure.’ He rose from the chair behind the desk and went back to the filing cabinet, found another folder and handed it to me. I read it silently, put it back, then headed off with Prim to question the security guards. As I did, I was beginning to think a very bad thought.
As it turned out, only one guard had been in the hut at the main gate when Stu Queen had talked his way in, with his security pass, to retrieve a piece of equipment he had left. And, as it turned out further, that guard had gone for an extended comfort pause when his mate had returned, and had assumed that the guy in the van must have checked out while he was enthroned.
Miles was waiting for us at the door of the disguised office when we returned from our interrogation. I had got tough with the guys at the finish, warning them that their continued employment was in my hands, so they had better keep their mouths tight shut not just about that incident, but about our visit . . . at least, I thought but didn’t say, until the leasing company which owned the Jet Ranger found out that it was missing.
‘Well,’ I asked. ‘You got the PM on-side?’ I don’t think I had really believed him earlier.
He looked at me, just a little crestfallen. ‘Yes, ‘he answered, ‘but only up to a point. I told him the whole story. He was appalled; he’s got a crush on Dawn, I think. I tried to persuade him that you and I should go in alone, and eventually, he had his staff make a call to Australia. They faxed him my service record; once he’d read that he said I could go on the operation . . . but it has to be led by the Special Boat Service.
‘He’s gone off to speak to the Home Secretary and the Chief of the Defence staff, to get the support teams lined up, and to square the whole operation with the Dutch Prime Minister. He doesn’t think that will be a problem.’
‘What about me?’ I was actually beginning to feel disappointed; looking back on it, I must have been crazy.
Miles grinned. ‘He took some persuading, but you’re included. I told him that there are a lot of people on my movie crews, and one or two of them - like Donn - never become familiar faces to me. I f
inally convinced him that, since the one photograph we have is blurred, you are the only person who can identify Stephen Donn straight away, if we find him on board.’
When I get a bit nervous, usually there’s this wee hamster which starts doing revolutions on a wheel in the pit of my stomach. Not this time, though; this time it felt like a big black rat, its claws pounding at the treadmill. It took me more than a few seconds to bring it, and myself, back under control.
From that moment I couldn’t think about anything else but what we were going to have to do.
‘When do we go in?’ I asked.
‘Dawn,’ he replied; I was secretly pleased that now he looked as nervous as I felt. ‘Appropriate, eh.’
Chapter 52
The sun wasn’t up, but the sky was lightening, pink in the east. It was seven-twenty - Central European Time, since we were on the Continent, in theory at least.
In fact we were on a Dutch pilot cutter, having sailed out of Rotterdam about ninety minutes earlier. A Royal Marine detachment had flown us over from Aldershot barracks in one of their two assault helicopters. The squad was on-shore, locked and loaded, ready for back-up action if required, but their commanding officer was at sea with us, ready to lead the raid.
The wetsuit felt strange to me. I hadn’t told Miles any porkies about my scuba experience, but it had been a while since I had done anything serious, and longer than that since I had dived in North Sea conditions.
‘Right, gentlemen,’ barked the Marine Lieutenant, whose name was Ardley; he was the youngest of the four of us in the ship’s small wardroom, no more than twenty-five, I guessed. ‘If you’ll look here . . .’ He unrolled a chart on the table, then held the corners in place using mugs as paperweights. The thought of Stephen Donn’s nuts came viciously to me as I looked at them.
He pointed at the map. ‘At this moment, we are here, in this navigation channel, sailing north-eastwards. Our closest point to the platform will come in eleven minutes and we will be half a mile away from it. At that point we will slow for a few seconds and you two, Sergeant Roper, and I will go into the water, from the port side of the vessel, to avoid any tiny chance of our being seen by anyone on board the rig.’
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