by A P Bateman
Caroline nodded, loosing herself in the vineyards as they swept past. She wondered how Alex was, whether he was gaining progress with the investigation. She knew he wouldn’t be scared if the tables were turned. Wouldn’t be running. He’d be hunting. She wondered whether she was up to this, and that in turn saddened her. But it was more than that. Seeing Ryan Beard again reminded her of the anecdote in Switzerland. Of the man she had fallen in love with, and whether he was the person she thought he was, or a man she barely knew.
The Reaper.
36
King had taken the lift as far as Winchester. The couple were taking the ferry to Santander from Portsmouth. They were surfing, camping and partying their way down to Morocco. Perhaps further – they hadn’t decided yet. To King, it sounded brilliant, and as he had sat listening to the music and doing his best not to become too engaged in conversation, he thought how wonderful it would be to travel with Caroline. Maybe like this couple, Morocco would be a good place to stop off.
King knew Morocco well. But he knew a lot of places well, and had operated in the shadows all over the world. It would be difficult to holiday in countries where he had previously carried out his country’s dirty work. Maybe Morocco would be out of the question. He had taken out an Al Qaeda cell in the Atlas Mountains and exfiltrated via Casablanca to the Canary Islands. It wasn’t hitch-hiking conversation, so he had shaken his head when they asked if he’d ever been. He volunteered that he’d surfed a bit. Hire boards in various countries and some paddle boarding on the creeks near his cottage in Cornwall. He hadn’t even thought about the cottage, or what was left of it, until then. He would have to chase the insurers when he had time.
Winchester was a pleasant market town with a mixture of historical old-English architecture, remains of settlements dating back to King Alfred and more than its fair share of pound shops. King had stayed there before, many years ago. The city was now several rungs down the desirability ladder, but he reflected many places had gone the same way since the recession and austerity measures. If towns and cities like Winchester could feel the effect, then it wasn’t such a stretch to see why people supported Anarchy to Recreate Society.
Liam Jameson. A little boy, suffocated in his bed. Collateral damage to their cause. The memory was all it took for King to discount the thought, remind himself of what he stood for.
The couple had dropped him off at the train station. It was a kind gesture, taking them twenty-minutes or more out of their way. King had quietly tucked a twenty into the dashboard of the van and thanked them. He hadn’t wanted the awkwardness of offering fuel money, and he was grateful for the lift, as well as the cover they had unwittingly afforded him.
The station was small. But the trains ran to London every forty-minutes or so and the journey only took an hour, so it was a popular station for commuters.
King ordered a cup of tea and as he paid, he picked up an oversized cookie. He found an empty seat and took out his phone, scrolled through as he ate and drank. He dialled, but Caroline’s number went straight to voicemail. His text had not been answered either. For the first time since they had been in their relationship, he felt worried. He was tempted to break protocol and call Simon Mereweather, but it would be the death nail to them working as a couple. Mereweather was no fool, and tolerant though he was, and suited by their relationship as he had often been, he would see that the line had been crossed. Both King and Caroline could not afford to be seen to care too much, too publicly. They had to maintain professionalism always. His thumb hovered over Mereweather’s details, but he resisted, locked the phone and slipped it back into his pocket.
A train was announced on the speaker system as passing through and a few minutes later it travelled through the station at speed. King felt the draught from it, watched the head-down commuters returning from London. He checked his watch. Five minutes until his train arrived. He looked each way down the platform. It was habit. He took people in, remembered them. He would know who had remained, who was new on the scene or who had moved on. He could look through people, guess at the lives they lived. He was seldom wrong. He had years of experience.
Which was why he noticed the man at the end of the platform.
There was nothing noticeable to most people. But King wasn’t most people. King noticed the man’s reaction when he made eye contact. A visible flinch. Like a mild electric shock. His interest in the wall next to him. King looked at the wall. Victorian block work. Mainly limestone. Neat and well made by experienced stone masons. Not that interesting, yet the man stared at it as though his life depended on it.
King was using his peripheral vision now. The man was looking back his way. King wasn’t going to test him. Not yet. He had another couple of minutes until the train arrived and people were already getting up and standing at the yellow line on the platform. King checked his watch again. He stood up and walked down the platform to a space among the scattering of people. He held his bag in his left hand. He always did. He could shoot and fight with both hands, but he was right-hand dominant, and he always kept it free. He kept looking left, then glanced to his right, like he was trying to spot the train. He caught the man looking at him again, the sudden snatch as he found something else to look at. He touched the top of his head too, and turned halfway around. He walked to a vending machine, studying the array of things he didn’t want and made a show of checking his pockets for change.
King was intrigued, not so much worried. The man wasn’t in the same league as he was used to dealing with, but he could hear the gruff Scottish voice of his mentor, Peter Stewart, the man who had recruited him half a lifetime ago, admonishing him for being complacent. The thought worried King. A ringer was a practice MI5 used back in the troubles with Northern Ireland. An obvious figure to draw attention away from the real pros. King cursed himself. A year of surveillance and investigative duties and he could feel his edge wasn’t as sharp as it had been. He was in his early forties and was suddenly feeling old. He was fit and strong, but he was double guessing himself. His sharpness was being eroded.
He checked his watch. There was less than two minutes until the train arrived. He didn’t bother checking for his tail. He turned around and walked to the gents. He found the cubicles empty, chose the far left nearest the wall and went inside. He dropped the seat and placed the bag on top. He rummaged through, dropped his clothes onto the filthy floor. He checked the inside of the leather holdall.
Nothing.
King turned the bag over in his hands, examined the seams. There were a few loose threads. He looked at them closely, then took out his knife and slipped the blade into the stitching. The blade was scalpel-sharp, sharpened and stropped regularly. It glided through the stitching and when he had opened it up enough, he slipped his fingers into the section between the soft leather of the bottom of the case and the reinforced leather of the base. King found that the base was made from cardboard. Not the material he’d have expected for two-hundred pounds-worth of luggage, but that was the least of his worries. The tracker, identical to the one he had found in the satnav, nestled in the palm of his hand. He turned it over, then slipped it into his pocket. He didn’t bother checking his watch, just stuffed the clothes back into the bag, zipped it up and walked out of the lavatories and onto the platform.
The train pulled in, brakes squeaking and the doors opening the moment it stopped. King stepped on without looking for the man. He found a seat towards the front of the carriage, his back against the bulkhead. He stowed the bag on the seat beside him. The train was virtually empty. Heading into London at this time was nothing like the commute in the morning. The people were heading back out and the trains on the other side of the track would be full.
King spotted the man. Despite his interest in the vending machine, he neither ate nor drank anything as he sat down. King wondered whether he was a bluff, whether there was another watcher on him, or a team of them. Or perhaps the tracking device was the key. Lose the guy and relax. Oblivious of the t
racker in his luggage. Maybe that was their plan all along?
His bag had been left with reception at the St. Michael’s Hotel in Falmouth. He couldn’t see how someone could have tampered with it. He doubted that these people could have been so obvious as to bribe a member of staff. The tracking device was a sealed unit, activated by a pull-tab. Like a child’s battery-powered toy. Pull the tab and you’ve got forty-eight hours of battery life. The power would soon be used up, emitting a signal every couple of seconds at a high frequency. So conceivably, the device could have been planted before he had even set out for Cornwall. But that would not have worked with the satnav which came with the hire car. And the two units were identical, which indicated a connection.
The train had moved on and was nearing Basingstoke. The fields of lush-green grass and yellow rapeseed had given way to houses and business parks and soon the train threaded through a heavily populated residential area. The station had few people on this side of the platform. Across the tracks, the opposite platform was full, people having disembarked the London train and heading for the exits.
King eyed the man. He was over six-feet tall, wiry and fit-looking. His hair was dark and swept back, a ponytail wrapped up in a man-bun. He had a neatly trimmed beard too. His forearms were tattooed. King noted several gold rings. They were chunky, would double as knuckle dusters. The man looked back at King, held his stare for a moment, then looked away. King didn’t push it. He could see the man looking back at him, but King was already using his peripheral vision as he apparently watched the countryside return, leaving Basingstoke far behind them.
King took out his mobile phone. He dialled a number from memory, pressed nine and started to type out a concise message and sent it. He watched the phone indicate that the message had left. His phone was still connected through the first call and this made the message secure. The first number was a scrambling function through GCHQ’s ECHELON system. A piggyback line through which a conversation could be had, or a text sent with zero chance of interception through scanners or hard-wire technology. If the people King found himself up against had the resources, then his phone could easily be tapped. In fact, he’d bet everything he owned that it already had been. But no matter who they were, they wouldn’t be able to bypass the systems at GCHQ. He put the phone back in his pocket. The man was still watching him. A woman across the aisle from him got up and stepped out of the carriage, opening the door to the lavatory.
King got up and walked down the aisle towards the man. He watched the man’s expression, enjoyed his discomfort even, as he drew near, but walked on past and stood at the door to the lavatory. He glanced back down the aisle. There were less than ten people back there, all engrossed on their phones. A few read magazines or books, but nobody so much as looked up. The lavatory was occupied, but King already knew it was. And so would the man.
The toilet flushed, water ran for a moment and the door-lock clicked backwards. King would have his answer in a moment. It didn’t get better than this for a would-be assassin. A target with their back turned, a train barely occupied and a vacant lavatory. Christmas was coming in the shape of Woking Station. A nice, convenient exit. If the man was working surveillance, then he would stay put. If he had darker motives, than he would make his move now, or when King disembarked.
The door opened, and King stepped aside for the woman, who nodded a thank you and walked back into the carriage. King raised his left arm, let the crystal of his Rolex’s face catch the light, and saw the man approaching behind him as he made out to check the time. Quality crystal and a shiny black watch face. King had used his watch as a mirror many times before. The man moved in, King spun around clockwise and the man’s outstretched arm, the black tactical knife held firmly in his hand, lunged forwards into thin air. King caught the man’s wrist with his right hand and punched him in the back of the neck with his left. He used the man’s momentum to bundle him into the lavatory, wrenched his arm backwards until he dropped the knife, then punched him twice more. He turned and fumbled for the door closed. The man was dazed, but he suddenly seemed to snap-to and as the door slid closed, he was back up and swinging punches for his life.
King took a moment to adjust to the change of pace, but he blocked hard, striking the man’s forearms with his own. King was stronger, his forearms meaty and veined from years of doing multiple sets of press-ups every day and working through blocking and striking routines on a heavy punch-bag. His forearms were weapons and each block threatened to snap the man’s bones. The man recoiled, wincing as his pummelling was countered. He punched out, catching King on the chin. The impact of the punch had been helped by the chunky gold ring on the man’s middle finger. King felt the lights dim, ducked, knowing another punch could well knock him out, and when he came back up, he did so hard and with the thrust of a power-lifter, and with the man’s scrotum in his clasp. The man’s eyes were about as wide open as was humanly possible, and they made a good enough target, so King jabbed two outstretched fingers deep into the man’s eye sockets. The man screamed and recoiled, but lost his footing and fell. The side of his head hit the toilet with a sickening thud and the man went still.
King stepped back, but there was barely enough room in the confines of the lavatory and he felt the door give a little under his weight. He looked down at the man, but recognised the twitching right foot as his nervous system shutting down. The man was already dead. King cursed under his breath. He had wanted to question him.
King bent down and pulled the man up by his jacket’s lapels. He dropped him down onto the toilet and pressed him back against the wall to steady him. He checked through his pockets and found a basic phone and a money clip with a few hundred pounds in it. He pocketed both. He then took out the tracking device and dropped it into his shirt pocket. He picked up the knife, folded it and kept it also. Then he looked back at the body. He pulled out a long length of toilet paper, opened the knife and caught hold of the man’s right hand. He worked quickly, using the joint rather than breaking the bone and removed the man’s index finger. He wrapped it up in the toilet paper and put the bundle in his jacket pocket. He then used some more toilet paper to wipe the handle of the knife clean of his own fingerprints and dropped it into the man’s shirt pocket. He washed his hands, checked himself in the mirror and cautiously opened the door. There was nobody waiting. King shut the door, then turned his back on the carriage and worked his own knife blade into the lock. He used it like a screwdriver and removed the locking nut. The door was now jammed closed. It would only take someone using a knife or screwdriver to get in, but most people would simply complain and use another lavatory. In King’s experience, people seldom worked the problem themselves. He checked his watch as he returned to his seat and picked up his bag. The train was already slowing for the station and passengers started to gather their coats and laptop bags, shut down their laptops and pocket their mobile phones.
King was first out of the carriage and as he walked across the quiet platform he saw Simon Mereweather waiting for him. The man was impeccably dressed in a fashionably cut suit, but to King looked two sizes too small, and he wore the shiniest pair of brown Oxfords King had ever seen. They looked like they had a clear coat of lacquer applied.
“Got your text,” said Mereweather. “Where’s your guest?”
“Change of plan,” King replied. “Take me somewhere with a fingerprint database. Preferably one with Russian or East European links.”
37
“Have you spoken with Caroline?”
“No.”
“It’s not against the rules.”
“We have our own set of rules,” King said. He was looking out of the passenger window of the Jaguar. He wasn’t sure if it was a company car or Mereweather’s own. Charles Forrester, the previous deputy director of MI5 used a Jaguar, but after he had died, the bean counters had taken hold of the Security Service and fiscal streamlining had paired the intelligence service to the bone. Simon Mereweather was from a family of money, he
could probably find MI5’s annual budget in a savings account he’d forgotten about.
“She made it safe and sound out of South Africa. She’s in the air now.”
King nodded. “She was lucky.” He wouldn’t have shown it, but he felt a rush of euphoria. His heart raced, and he felt he could start to relax.
“She shot her way out of there like one of our boys from Hereford would have. Or indeed, yourself,” Mereweather paused. “It’s a shame about the South African Secret Service agent and the prisoner. I guess we’ll have to see how much he told her before it all kicked off and we lost our only witness.”
“What do you mean?” King asked. “Caroline was abducted. What’s this about an intelligence agent? And what happened to the prisoner? She said she was alone in the bush when she called for assistance.”
Mereweather smirked. “You two really are pros,” he said. “I thought she would have spoken to you about it.”
“We have our own rules, like I said. We don’t trouble each other when we’re on a task,” King paused. He was becoming increasingly aggravated by Mereweather’s apparent delight at knowing more about her situation than King did. He didn’t have the MI5 man down as the type. He had noticed Mereweather around Caroline, the man seemed to show an interest in her, but King discounted it. He trusted Caroline, had no reason to be jealous. He wondered if the separate tasks they had been carrying out these past few months was down to Mereweather. He hoped not, for his sake. He turned to the man and said coldly. “Don’t piss me about, Simon. Tell me what you know, now.”
“Thank you, agent…”
“Don’t pull rank on me,” King interrupted. He didn’t shout or raise his voice in any way. He simply spoke quietly, slowly. His gravelly voice level. “Don’t think you, or anyone you know can say or do a damned thing that has me worried about authority. Don’t make that mistake with me, Simon. Now, what happened?”
