by A P Bateman
Kruger was still firing and had wounded the man in front of the Land Cruiser. He was limping away towards the pickup truck, aiming his pistol back at the burning vehicle and firing double-taps at the windscreen. Caroline shouldered the rifle and fired twice. Centre mass. The man dropped, his weapon clattering to the ground. He rolled onto his side. She aimed between his shoulder blades and fired three more shots, before turning and sighting the weapon on the body behind her. The man’s legs were engulfed in flames and his rubber trainers was fuelling the fire, glowing like firelighters among the flames. If he wasn’t moving while he was on fire, she figured he was going nowhere.
There were two vehicles approaching from Tokai. Both looked domestic. One old Japanese pickup laden with fruit, and a white Peugeot estate with a surfboard strapped to the roof. The pickup driver activated the vehicle’s hazard lights and opened the door. He was approaching the Peugeot. The driver of which, was standing at his open door and using his mobile phone. Caroline could see they were no threat to her.
She turned back to the Toyota, but the sudden rush of flame forced her backwards.
“Kruger!” she shouted.
There was no reply, but the fuel was burning fiercely and had now engulfed the cab. She took a step forwards, but the heat forced her back further. She desperately wanted to get to him, but was ashamed that her body wouldn’t allow her, her limbs rigid with fear, as though her brain had simply put on the brakes. Her survival instinct was forcing her back, there was no overriding it. Her eyes instantly dried as they were hit by the barrier of heat, her eyelids burned as she blinked, and her hair felt as though it were about to singe. Hot smoke caught the back of her throat and burned her lungs, and it was all over. She scurried backwards to clean air, no part of her able to control her actions and remain near the intensity of the inferno. She spat onto her fingers and rubbed them into her hot, dried eyeballs. She turned away from the fire, walked a few steps as she blinked life back into them.
There was a gut-wrenching scream from within the burning vehicle. But it was short lived. It turned into a harrowing gargle that sent a shiver down her spine.
A single gunshot rang out and made her recoil. For a moment, she reacted by raising the rifle, but almost as quickly, she could tell it had come from inside the wreckage and she lowered the weapon, allowing the muzzle to point at the ground. She turned and walked towards the two parked vehicles, taking some relief from the knowledge that the South African intelligence agent had found a way out of that hell and was no longer burning alive.
31
“I love the sea,” Amanda said, somewhat wistfully. “Gorgeous on a day like today. I would love to move down here, perhaps have a little cottage hideaway like you do.”
Her words stung, but King didn’t correct her as he looked out across the bay from Castle Beach. His cottage laid in tatters. A mass of rubble and burned-out timber. He’d never step foot in it again.
Amanda had taken the scenic route along Castle Drive, the road which wrapped its way around Pendennis Castle and took in the mouth of the Carrick Roads where it met the Atlantic, signifying the end of the English Channel. The water glistened and shimmied. The sky was deep blue, almost mirroring the sea. Three tankers were moored in the bay, waiting their turn for repairs or unloading at Falmouth docks. Days like this so early in the season were rare.
It was indeed a beautiful view. But he was in no mood for it. Amanda had performed the autopsy on Sir Ian Snell’s body. That wasn’t the problem. The problem had been her verdict. Or inherent lack of it.
“I need something to work on,” he said. “Anarchy to Recreate Society will be looking at new targets. There may just be one person left alive on the original rich list, but it’s constantly evolving. They never killed those people in order, and they won’t start now. There are potentially five targets, all of them at risk. I need all the information I can get to stop these people.”
“They’ll finish their list,” she said.
“What makes you so sure?”
“Their psyche. They are a special bunch. They’ve delivered on every promise they’ve made so far.”
“So, give me something now!” King snapped. “I need to get moving. Your findings are important to me. I wouldn’t have hung around here waiting if they weren’t crucial to my investigation.”
“And I’ve already told you! I have to report my findings to the Home Secretary first,” she said, and in no way apologetically. “You have your orders and I have mine.”
“And that’s it?”
“We shared a few glasses of wine and a steak dinner. You make it sound like I owe you. We weren’t lovers,” she paused. “No matter how much you wanted us to be.”
“What?” King asked incredulously. “I have a fiancé, I told you that!”
“Well, why else would you invite me over for an intimate dinner in a secluded location?”
“What are you talking about? It was just dinner,” he glared across at her, but she was concentrating on the road and his stare went conveniently unnoticed. “So, by that statement, why did you come over? You have a fiancé also…”
“Maybe I wanted to sleep with you,” she said flippantly. “Or perhaps I felt obliged. Pressured into accepting a pass made by the lead investigator on the case. A career make-or- break case… your words, remember? Maybe I didn’t feel that I could turn down your advances? Look, don’t sweat it, I know that you’re taken. So am I. All I’m saying is, I don’t owe you anything, and my job comes first. I must present this to the Home Secretary. He will then, no doubt, fill in his minions.”
“Thanks,” he said warily. He had been wavering, but could now see Amanda Cunningham in a whole new light. She had the ability to twist both fact and inference. A dangerous person to be around.
She shrugged. “That’s just the way it works. You should know that by now.”
“I want to catch these bastards,” King interrupted tersely. “I need an edge.”
“And you’ll have my verdict by lunchtime tomorrow. I’m leaving in the morning,” she said. “You’re welcome to share my ride.”
“I’ll drive back tonight, thanks.”
“Have they fixed the glass?”
“I’m sure they have,” he said. “Anyway, I could do with the drive.”
“Another night in a decent hotel on expenses and a government-chartered helicopter?” she scoffed.
Amanda negotiated the narrow entrance to the hotel. There was a parking space on the left. She slammed on the brakes and reversed with little skill or judgement, encroaching on the other space. King would have to limbo around the door frame to avoid dinging the other car’s door.
“I’d prefer the company,” he said curtly.
“But you’ll be on your own.”
“Exactly.” He squeezed his frame out, sparing the other car’s door. She got out and he spoke over the roof as he slammed the door. “My department will call you and arrange a debrief.”
“It’s cut and dry, Alex.”
“If you say so.”
“I’m a Home Office pathologist. It’s what I say it is. The man was shot at long range by a single point-three-three-eight bullet.”
“Goodbye, Amanda.”
King was seething. Mad at her, mad with himself. He knew the dinner incident had been a mistake. And now he had Amanda Cunningham hanging over him. Had she wanted to sleep with him? Or had she felt obliged, pressured even, to meet? Either way, he felt she had leverage over him in both his private life, and with his work. He could care less about work. He was always close to quitting, ever drawn back in by a sense of duty and obligation. But it was his private life that mattered. That was truly priceless. He loved Caroline, heart and soul. He would do anything for her. Anything to keep what they had. And if Amanda Cunningham could see inside him, see what he had done in his life, she would not have been so flippant. She would not push him an inch.
He walked across the carpark to the hotel and made his way down the steps to receptio
n. He had already settled his bill and they had held onto his travel bag for him. They gave him the keys to his hire car and he thanked them for both his stay and accommodating the vehicle’s repair.
When he went back outside, Amanda Cunningham’s car was no longer there. He thought it strange. He had not seen her check out or take her bags to the car this morning and she had said she was staying another night and flying back tomorrow. Perhaps she was searching for a better parking space? One where the owner of the car next to her stood a chance to get in.
The Ford was parked where he had left it, but now there was a new windscreen front and back, and it had been cleaned. He opened the rear door and dropped the bag on the seat. The interior had been vacuumed and wiped over. It had that new car smell. He settled in behind the wheel and went to start the engine.
A shiver ran down his spine.
He was getting sloppy.
Complacent.
A man had tried to kill him last night.
He cursed himself. He popped the bonnet and stepped outside the vehicle. He backed away and crouched down. He looked for wires, anything that should not have been there. He walked around, crouched again and studied the other side.
Nothing.
King got down into a press-up position and held it while he looked. He checked the inside of the wheels on the driver’s side, then got up and walked around the vehicle and repeated the process.
Nothing.
He walked around to the front and carefully felt around the bonnet opening. He was satisfied there was nothing to trip, so he gently opened the release and eased the bonnet upwards just an inch or so. He peered through the gap for a trip wire, two contact points – anything that could initiate a device.
Nothing.
Engines were more like vacuum cleaners these days, so there was little to look at. But that also made the task easier, and he knew his way around an engine bay and could see there was nothing there that shouldn’t have been. He closed the bonnet and stepped back.
Was he simply being paranoid?
No doubt about it. But paranoia had kept him alive so far. Although he was angry with himself at taking the status of the vehicle on face value. It had been a stupid mistake. He had told himself for almost twenty-years that if he ever started to make mistakes he would walk away. Perhaps he needed another few weeks up at Hereford. Another refresher with the regiment. Another chance to hone his skills and push himself to his limits. The thought of yomping thirty-miles across the rain-swept Brecon Beacons with an old and heavy FN rifle and fifty-pounds of Bergen, chasing twenty-something-year-old SAS recruits made him cringe. Now he knew he was softening in his role with MI5. He was losing his edge. The killer streak that the dark and secretive department within the walls of MI6 had kept alive in him for so long.
The thought made him think it was about time. Time to retire from what his recruiter and mentor, Peter Stewart, had called playing cowboys and Indians. He had some money saved. He knew Caroline had a little put by from when her fiancé had been killed. His in-service pension and the money from the sale of his property.
Both King and Caroline had found each other after personal tragedy. It was second-time-round for them both and they could end their service with MI5 and find something new without the pressures of paying rent or mortgages or loans.
King put the thought out of his head. It wasn’t time. He needed to focus on the job at hand. Focus on staying alive. Focus on hunting his enemy.
He opened the rear door and knelt on the ground. He checked under the seats, then under the floor mats. The search was fruitless, and he felt relieved. He was being proactive, getting himself in a better head-space for his tasks. He would stay in this mindset. Operating in the UK should take no less effort in personal security than if he were undercover in Syria or The Yemen. He felt better about himself, knowing he was upping his game. The enemy had got the drop on him back at his cottage, but he had beaten them. Taken out their assassin. Now he would be a tougher target.
A fox who had received a close call was a clever beast indeed.
King got down behind the wheel. The drive to London should take just under five hours. He knew the route he would take, didn’t need to punch anything into the satnav. It was a plug-in affair which came with the rental. King checked the glovebox, saw it packed away with the USB lead attached. He thought for a moment, then decided to take it out. He whipped out his pocket knife, opened the drop-point blade and undid the back. There were four tiny screw heads and he got them off quickly, used the tip of the blade to prise off the back. He could see the disk as soon as he opened it, around the size of a fifty-pence coin and twice as thick. He knew what it was the moment he saw it. It was a magnetic tracker with a lithium battery self-contained power source and GPS locator. He had used them before. They had around a forty-eight-hour life and were classed as a disposable unit. It could have been placed anywhere on the car, but somebody had gone to a great deal of effort to conceal this. Which told King two things. They expected him to search the vehicle, be at the top of his game. And they had known he would be away from the vehicle long enough to plant the device.
32
London
Gipri Bashwani was now at the top of the rich list. Which meant he was at the top of the kill list. He was third from the top when the list was conceived, and now he was the only one left. He had not donated anything more because of the threat. He had already done that. He had given twenty-two billion dollars to charities, schools, colleges and universities over the past ten-years. He had created a foundation which had taken ten-thousand families from the brink of homelessness in India alone. Despite Anarchy to Recreate Society’s claims, lifelong billionaires like Gipri Bashwani had done more good than the panic-shedding of wealth by scared dot-com billionaires who lived their life with more avarice than Bashwani would ever know. What he had created, as his legacy, was the infrastructure to continue his philanthropic work long after he was gone. At seventy-six years of age, he was a realist. He neither believed he had many years left at the helm of his empire, nor would he ever cower from the threats and actions of a terrorist group.
Few knew who Bashwani was. Certainly, he could walk down any street unrecognised. Readers of Forbes or the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times would know his name, the worth of his companies. He was involved in mining, oil, textiles, computer software and artificial intelligence. His company had taken control of one of the world’s best-known prestige car companies and shaken the automotive establishment to its core by announcing its intention for sole reliance on electric power overnight. Not in decades to come, but within two years. Worldwide. And all without affecting the shareholder stock in his oil company.
He also owned many properties all over the world, entire tower blocks. He had started on his path to wealth as a private residential landlord, and changed little more than the amount of property he owned and the way the rent was collected.
Bashwani was adamant he was not going to change a single thing he did because of the threat. He already employed a close protection team. It was their job to keep him alive, and his job, his obligation to his shareholders, to make money. Nothing was going to change that.
The man watched Gipri Bashwani step out of his Maybach limousine, the door held open by his personal bodyguard. The chauffeur drove away when the door slammed closed, re-entered the traffic. The bodyguard walked Bashwani to the door of Century Towers, home of the billionaire’s London offices. A second plain-clothed security officer opened the door for him and the two men stepped inside the smoked glass facade.
The man smoothed his hand over his two-day-old stubble, then ran his hand through his dark hair. He noted that the chauffer had been premature, left no way of escape. If a threat came from inside the building, then Bashwani would be cut off. He knew that close protection worked on a series of scenarios and the ability to counter them. Either Bashwani’s security was not as well-honed as it should have been for that of a billionaire, or the chauffe
r had made a simple mistake. Either way, mistakes could be exploited.
The man wound down the window of the battered Ford Transit van and let in enough air to demist the windscreen. He made a note of Bashwani’s time of arrival. He had already noted down the registration number of the Maybach. He opened the file again and looked up the section about security. He had read the file earlier, but went back over the personnel section once more.
Bashwani used a company for his security needs. Globe-Tech. Naturally, it boasted global capabilities and the company’s logo was of the earth. The ocean was blue, and the land was white and time zones ran from pole to pole with the two tropics and the equator striking through laterally. The font used was hard and boxy and futuristic and in all it looked like a hundred other security companies offering security and specialised services.
Globe-Tech boasted to employ only ex-military personnel. The company played on their contracting work in Afghanistan and Iraq, of their employees’ combat and operational experience in the theatre of war. They mentioned employees and training staff with ‘special forces’ experience. The man had watched intently, but nothing he had seen of the chauffer and the two bodyguards looked remotely in that echelon. Not even close.
The man knew that soldiers did not make the best bodyguards. If they did, the President of the United States would have a solely military-trained close protection detail, instead of the US Secret Service. The mindset was different, the skills as far removed from soldiering as it was possible to get.
He continued to study the file and noted that the chauffer was employed directly by Bashwani’s corporation umbrella. This operation filtered down assets to his separate companies within the Bashwani empire. The driver should have known better, should have been better trained. He should also have been briefed by the Globe-Tech bodyguard on bussing and debussing, on lines of cover and theoretical points of no return. He wondered how often the Globe-Tech shift rotations or allocations worked. Whether Bashwani was covered by the same person for days or weeks at a time, or whether it was a new bodyguard every time. He would have to continue his surveillance, because that knowledge would prove invaluable.
