Old Scores

A P Bateman

Old Scores

Copyright © 2025 by A P Bateman

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Also by A P Bateman

The Alex King Series

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Shadows of Good Friday

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Reaper

Stormbound

Breakout

From the Shadows

Rogue

The Asset

Last Man Standing

Hunter Killer

The Congo Contract

Dead Man Walking

Sovereign Power

Kingmaker

Untouchable

The Enemy

Die Trying

All the King’s Men

The Eagle’s Talon

Backlash

The Rob Stone Series

The Ares Virus

TheTown

The Island

Stone Cold

The Cartel

1600

The DCI Grant Series

Vice

Taken

Standalone Novels

The Most Dangerous Game

Never Go Back

Novellas

The Perfect Murder?

Atonement

Chapter One

London

The water was freezing, black as pitch, numbing his senses the instant he plunged beneath the surface. The cold was so intense it seemed to sear his skin, biting through every layer until it burned. For a moment, disoriented in the inky depths, he could not tell which way was up. Panic threatened as his lungs screamed for air, but he forced himself to stay calm, pushing through the confusion and the sting of the cold. He began to swim away from the bridge, each stroke a battle against the icy grip that threatened to paralyse his muscles. As he moved, he felt a sudden warmth bloom against his skin — the unmistakable sensation of blood escaping from a fresh wound, briefly vivid before it mingled with the river, dispersing into the darkness like smoke caught by the wind. Behind him, chaos reigned. The helicopter he had brought down with the M203 grenade launcher was a shattered wreck, flames licking at the night, while the city burned and erupted into pandemonium. All of it served as the perfect diversion, buying him the critical moments he needed to make his escape.

He surfaced quickly. As subtle as a bottling seal between waves. Just enough to take a deep breath, and then he was gone. Had he been seen? Had his enemy aimed and sought to finish him off? He would be out of range of the man’s Makarov by now. They had battled each other with rifles, and then it had been down to pistols over the length of Tower Bridge, and his enemy had got lucky. He knew that he had been hit when he had plunged into the river, but he did not yet know how badly. Only time would tell, but he could only think about that when he got clear. The current was strong from the ebbing tide. The longest river in England, and second longest in the United Kingdom, the River Thames snaked its way through the city, widening dramatically as it grew closer to the North Sea. The sea influenced the river up to ninety-five miles inland, creating an outgoing tide with the relentless motion of a conveyor belt, often too powerful for small craft to make headway against the tide. When he surfaced again, he could see Bermondsey Beach to his right, and he disregarded stealth for a steady and robust front crawl, his side searing from the gunshot wound and his legs threatening to seize and cramp from the cold. Collins no longer cared for his enemy standing vigil on the bridge. He was out of range, and the man wouldn’t be able to shoot him now, not even if he had picked up a rifle from the armed police officers that Collins had killed during his escape.

Collins welcomed the ooze of the sandy mud beneath his hands and feet as he clawed into the shallows. Ahead of him, a ‘mud larker’ paused, metal detector in hand, as he watched him claw his way up the beach. Wearing headphones to detect the sound of a find, the man had been oblivious of the terror raining down on the city. The explosions, the pandemonium, the bodies – he had been in his own world, untouched by reality. He stared disbelievingly at Collins as he struggled through the thick, silty mud, then put down his metal detector and shovel and stomped towards him, his Wellington boots caked with mud. Collins knew nothing of the people who hunted for treasures along the beaches of the Thames, but when he eventually got to his feet and the man held out a hand and tried to aid him, he punched him in the throat and pulled the coat from him as the man dropped to his knees. With the man staring wide-eyed, clutching his throat with both hands, Collins took his wallet and car keys from his pockets and trudged up the muddy sand to the steps.

The coat warmed him, and as he reached the top of the stone steps, he pressed the key fob and looked around the rows of parked vehicles for the tell-tale flash of lights. He assumed someone using a metal detector in mud wouldn’t be driving a Porsche, so he scanned for something older, like an estate car or an SUV. Perhaps even a practical off-road vehicle like a Land Rover Defender or a Toyota Landcruiser. He walked along the row of cars, testing the key fob, and got his answer fifty metres further down the road when the lights of a nondescript crossover blinked twice. Collins got inside and started the engine, setting the heater on full and directing the fan towards his legs. For the first time, he touched his aching side and looked down at his bloodied fingers. Three bullets had winged him. Two of those bullets had grazed shallow channels in his skin, and one had punched clean through the wall of muscle on his left side. He checked the man’s wallet. Two debit cards with contactless, and thirty pounds in cash. Not the best start he’d ever had, but certainly not the worst. He figured that he had twenty minutes before the man came to his senses and reported the incident to the police, but then again, London was burning. The police would be too busy navigating the carnage to warrant investigating low-level assault and a car theft. It would likely be an hour before the man had the wherewithal and means to report the cards missing. That would give Collins time to get the medical items that he would need, as well as clothing and food. Multiple purchases for under one hundred pounds each time. By the time the cards stopped working, he would have everything he would need to reach his hidden funds and disappear.

Chapter Two

Richard Collins had go-bags stashed all around the globe. He had started out hoarding weapons from missions along with bundles of cash and fake passports but later concentrated mainly on cash because with that he could easily obtain the other two. His old mentor, Peter Stewart, taught him the practice while serving in MI6. The rugged, alcoholic Scotsman had emphasised the need for money, weapons and passports, and it had stuck with him ever since. When he had been cut loose by MI6 and returned to working as a mercenary, Collins had plundered his MI6 go-bags and weapons caches and used them to good effect both redistributing them and using the weapons to fulfil contracts. MI6 had later sent a man to kill him, but their assassin had failed. Collins had put three bullets in his former teammate and escaped their clutches. He had later relocated to Australia and, using one of his false identities, had hidden out in the army and later in the Australian Special Air Service Regiment. He had risen through the ranks and plied his trade (and natural abilities honed by the British Secret Intelligence Service) all around the globe, but especially in Afghanistan, where he had later been cut loose without an official court martial for the same behaviour that had seen MI6 sever all ties with him.

The bag he retrieved in Dover contained all he needed for his escape: a Browning 9mm pistol, a valid passport in a clean and unused alias, ten thousand pounds in a mix of sterling, US dollars, and euros, and twenty gold sovereigns. Peter Stewart had always advised his agents to carry gold, as its value was held globally and could be exchanged for cash anywhere. Sovereigns kept things simple.

Collins left the pistol and ammunition. He was going to take a ferry to Calais and was not willing to risk being caught with it by either UK or French customs. Besides, he had experience procuring weapons and a dead drug dealer or cop would not weigh on his conscience – it never had before.

After driving away from the river in the unfortunate mud larker’s car, Collins had used one of the stolen cards in a pharmacy to buy all the first-aid materials he would need. He had been extremely fortunate with the placement of the bullets. The wounds consisted of two grazes and a single through-and-through trauma, and the grazes had stopped bleeding significantly. He had washed the wounds thoroughly in strong antiseptic and used superglue and plasters to seal the through-and-through bullet hole on both sides of his torso. After he had patched the wounds, he had taken some strong painkillers and several glucose shots, the type favoured by cyclists and marathon runners. He now alternated between ibuprofen and paracetamol every two hours to manage the pain. As he was running on empty, he had loaded up with empty calories from a Greggs bakery, indulging in a massive spike of carbohydrates and fat in a rare break from his usual high-protein diet that complemented his daily running and weight training regimen. Hydration was important, too. The body could not heal unless it received water, and he had downed two litres of mineral water on the drive down to Dover, where he had later abandoned the vehicle and purchased a fixed-return ticket as a foot passenger. Collins had no intention of returning to the UK but return tickets – just like an extra night in a hotel room that he never had intention in using – muddied the waters for the police and security services.

The flat and somewhat featureless coastline and town of Calais presented itself within an hour, and the ferry sailed close to the coast and into port some thirty minutes after that. He disembarked without incident, and the French customs officer paid little attention to the fit-looking man with a small backpack slung over one shoulder. Collins stopped in a quiet café for coffee and a croissant and loaded up on more painkillers. He went to the toilets and was delighted to see boxes and equipment stored in the corridor. Before using the facilities, he took what he needed, then returned to finish his coffee. He ignored the pretty waitress - whom he would usually have attempted to chat up - because of fatigue and pain, and he left an average tip so he would not be remembered. Non-tippers and high-rollers were all remembered by hospitality staff, but for entirely different reasons. Outside, he ambled down the street looking for an inconspicuous vehicle that would be easy to steal. He favoured older cars – usually French or Italian – not because they would fit in better on the continent, but because they tended to have fewer technical security devices installed. Japanese and German cars were the best protected, so he usually stayed clear of them. After two hundred metres, he found just what he was looking for. The tiny, red Fiat Panda looked to be around ten years old. Mechanically simple, reliable, with good fuel economy – which meant he would stop infrequently – and easy to break into. He took the packing strap, that he had taken from the back of the restaurant, from his pocket and folded one end into a loop, then, reinforcing the inside of the loop with a length of card, he eased it under the rubber door seal of the rear driver’s door. Next, he tied a slip knot on the other end, used the card to work it through the seal, and manipulated both ends until he passed the loop through the rear door handle and into the centre of the loop with a slip knot. Once he had achieved this – between glancing around him to ensure he was not being observed – he eased back on one end until the slip knot cinched tightly. When he eased back on the packing strap, it pulled out the door handle, and he quickly reached around and opened the driver’s door, which unlocked the central locking. The basic little car did not have an alarm or immobiliser fitted, and he soon broke the steering lock and used the small Swiss Army knife from his go-bag to cut the wires and hotwire the vehicle. Within thirty minutes, he had fuelled the car using cash, stocked up on provisions in the service station and was on the A24 motoring for Paris.

Chapter Three

Paris

There was safety in the streets, safety in numbers. Collins had found that although the countryside appeared to provide anonymity and space, one could never see one’s enemy approaching. Rural communities noticed things, too. The streets limited the enemy’s view. Pedestrians created barriers, and buildings could be used to disappear. Subways, trainlines, public buses and taxis provided a means of transport where you could notice someone following you, and the queues and bustle of people meant that your enemy could easily lose sight of you. Collins would always have preferred a rural scenario when he took on a contract to kill. He could lay up half a mile away, camouflaged and in a well-constructed hide that the people who trained him had always called an LUP, or Laying Up Place, he could be free to watch the mark coming and going and build a profile to use to his advantage, and he could approach at night, if necessary, and would already know where the security devices such as trembler devices, PIR systems or alarms were located. He often used his sniper skills to take out the mark from a thousand metres away and maintain his distance. In the city, he would get close to the mark, perhaps use a knife and escape in the chaos, but there was always the risk of being detected through witnesses, police intervention or CCTV. Collins had now switched his mindset from hunter to the hunted. He was on the run and would put himself in his enemy’s position until he could get on top of the situation. The man who had shot him would want to see it through. Collins already had the advantage because he had beaten that man before. And he would do so again.

He left the Fiat at the subway and took a ride four stops before climbing the steps and being greeted by the Seine. Tourists ambled along its banks, lovers’ hands entwined, others snapping photographs or posing for selfies while mid-monologue for their Instagram audiences of triple figures. Collins thought it was bizarre behaviour but realised his views were no longer normal. He found a cheap hotel off Rue de Rivoli and checked in for two nights using his fake passport and paying in cash. He had discarded the stolen debit cards in London after his fourth contactless tap had been blocked and was now using the euros. Collins had done this a hundred times and knew how to remain invisible under the watchful eyes of the world’s best intelligence services. It was what had kept him alive for so long.

He needed rest. The body could not heal without rest. Inside his hotel room, Collins locked the door, took the upright wooden chair from in front of the desk, and wedged the back under the door handle. He opened the window, checked the outside ledge and immediately, he had both assessed and memorised his escape route if needed. He could shuffle to the next window ledge, make the ten-foot drop to the rear fire escape, and shin down the alleyway below. He opened the window and kicked off his shoes before scrutinising himself in the upright mirror. Usually, he did not look his forty-one years, but today he looked closer to fifty. His close-cropped blond hair had flecks of grey at the sides, which appeared somewhat more exaggerated today. Deep black encircled his eye sockets, and the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes looked deep and noticeable. He had given up on ever seeing the bright sparkle in his eyes again – those days were long behind him. He hadn’t seen them since he was fourteen and living in Zimbabwe. His mother had been dying from cancer. She had become bed-bound, doubly incontinent and could not bring herself to eat, and so he had smothered her while she had slept. With the savings she had always kept in a tin under the kitchen sink and with just the clothes on his back, he had left the failing, farm and never looked back. The blacks had always tried to take the land from them, and the damned kaffirs could have it. Within months it would be barren. His mother had always said, Kaffirs always dreamed big but lived small. Farming the land in Zimbabwe took hard work and commitment that was beyond them. Collins had become a man that day, but something had been forever. The brightness in his eyes, the anticipation of hope – it had left him as his mother had let out a soft moan and the now familiar sound of a death rattle. When he was quite sure that she was dead, he had stepped back and looked at the horror on the bed. She raised both hands to her neck, then dropped them by her side, and he was quite convinced that she had still been alive and for a moment his heart had soared. It wasn’t over. Perhaps there was a chance after all? But no. Over the years he had witnessed a dozen corpses do the same. It was a curious reaction to death that he was unable to either fathom or explain. He had shot men clean through the heart or forehead, and still the arms hands had gone to their throats, then rested back by their sides, and it had always reminded him of that day when he had become a man, and his childhood had died along with the filth-ridden corpse in his mother’s bed. When he was quite sure that she was dead, he had turned around and caught sight of himself in the mirror on her dressing table and had barely recognised himself.

Collins stripped off and gently peeled back the dressing. The superglue had held for the most part, but where the skin had lost its bond, the wound looked sore and wept. The bleeding had stopped, though. He had recognised the Makarov in his enemy’s hand. He was now thankful for the weapon’s unique 9mm variant calibre, which lacked the power of 9x19mm Parabellum – the ubiquitous round in modern 9mm handguns. The full metal jacketed bullets had merely punched through and through the wall of muscle where a less physical man’s love handle would have been. Basic, low-velocity ammunition without the devastation of hollow points or the more sophisticated Hydro Shock or Black Tallon rounds popular for US self-defence. Thank heavens for small mercies. And his enemy’s shitty aim.

Collins stepped into the tiny bathroom and ran the shower cold. The cold water would help with the swelling that was pulling at the superglue and breaking the bond. He washed with the small hand soap provided and was not shy about cleaning around his wounds, cursing when his fingers probed too deeply and the soap stung him like a hundred wasp stings. When he stepped out of the shower and towelled himself dry, he studied the bullet holes in the mirror, twisting his body so he could see the entry wounds in his back. He would get even for this. And then some.

The antiseptic stung as he dabbed it liberally, but he took the pain because he needed it to heal. His survival instinct was strong, but it had been honed by the toughest man he had ever known. Peter Stewart was his mentor in MI6 and the man who had recruited and trained him to battle – and win – against the odds. The rugged, alcoholic Scotsman had been a father figure to him. Collins had been alone since the age of fourteen and impressionable to older men in his life. He had migrated south to South Africa and lived on the streets of Pretoria and Johannesburg before venturing to the coast, ending up in East London and then Durban. At the age of sixteen, he met Preet Du Plessis, a former police officer-turned-mercenary who had plied his deadly trade all over the African continent. First working as a runner for the man, who was involved in every illicit activity from drug-running and prostitution to contract killing. Collins had been tough and impressionable and had killed for money for the first time at the age of seventeen. He had walked up to the police inspector as he had fumbled for his keys on the doorstep to his home and emptied the five-shot cylinder of a .38 bullets into the man’s head. Collins had received the equivalent of five hundred pounds for the contract and had never looked back. A year later, he was working as a mercenary in the Congo with Preet Du Plessis calling the shots from the safety of his beachside Durban home. He operated for five years in Africa fighting wars for the highest bidder and purchased a farm in Zimbabwe, which he still owned and had left dormant for the past ten years. Five times larger than his childhood home and with a river running straight through it. One day, he would return and rebuild and live out his days in peace and tranquillity. He half expected it to have been subject to a land grab - the kaffirs did that all the time - but he had never had problems making ‘people problems’ disappear. Collins had always faced his problems and challenges with an extreme measure of violence, and after his time had come to an end with British Intelligence and he had escaped their assassin’s bullet, he had hidden out in Australia and used a fake identity to join the army and had later joined the Australian SAS. He had enjoyed the security afforded him by the military machine. He had a home and a paycheque, and nobody could get to him without serious planning and having the inside track within the Australian Defence Force. Best of all was his special forces remit and the missions that had enabled him to indulge in his greatest pleasure – killing people. After an incident in Afghanistan that had seen him escape a courtroom, but end his military career, he had found himself on the international close protection circuit and from there, he had turned full circle and had once again plied his deadly trade taking mercenary contracts – often from the very people he was being paid to protect. He hadn’t protected popstars or movie starlets – he had protected the richest and most powerful people on the planet who had their fingers in many pies. Controlling governments and elections was their stock-in-trade, simply an extension to the board meeting.

Collins regarded his body in the mirror. He was wiry and displayed prominent muscle tone and sinew. His tanned skin was a patchwork of scarring from shrapnel, knives and bullets, and he had lost count of the times he had patched himself up inside field tents or cheap hotel rooms. He was an expert with the needle, having sutured not only himself but colleagues and comrades alike. With the grazes and bullet holes cleaned thoroughly, he used a needle and thread to suture the through-and-through bullet wound, contorting his waist to seal both entry and exit sites. His hands shook, his teeth clenched tightly throughout the procedure, and he nipped off the ends of thread to prevent snagging and discomfort. When he had finished, he opened the quarter bottle of Scotch and took several long pulls straight from the neck of the bottle. The first for the pain, the second to relax and then the third for his old mentor who had taught him everything he knew. Fuck it, he thought and took another two gulps, savouring the burn as it flowed down his gullet and warmed his insides. Collins pulled on a clean pair of trousers and a light, cotton T-shirt and lay down on the bed. The bed creaked under his weight and the headboard banged on the wall, and he reflected that it would have been a noisy proposition had he had a woman with him, although those days were becoming increasingly rare. He knew that there was something in his eyes that told a woman not to bother, not to let down their guard with him. He was dangerous, and women knew it. Even the most reckless women with a self-esteem lower than a snake’s belly thought twice about leaving a bar with him. Collins had greater concerns, though. He had an unfulfilled contract that had been left in tatters, and he had an enemy who he knew would not give up hunting him down. Not now that it had started, and Collins had come back into his life. He could not afford to sit idly by and wait for them to come to him. He was a hunter, and his enemy would always be his prey.

Chapter Four

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

“Habib is dead.”

“And what of Kamal?”

“He is reported to have been killed in the attack London.” Omar Asad shrugged. “But my sources claim that he was executed by British intelligence services. There is a gap in the CCTV footage. One minute he was seen with a giant black man on the forty-second floor… the next minute he is taking up ten-square metres of pavement below…”

“Just like Habib, then…” Hafeez sneered. “Murdered in the foyer of the Savoy Hotel by British security services.”

“The agent who killed him is on remand in prison. Fear not, Hafeez, we will get to her.”

Hafeez nodded. “She is not our concern. Not yet at least. She will keep. But Kamal has taken a great deal of our money… of our cause’s money… and now his assets have been seized by the UK government. He has set us back years. And the operation was a failure. Only a few bridges were destroyed, so we were nothing more than a mild traffic inconvenience when we were to have shut down the entire city.”

Asad did not add anything. He knew that Hafeez was worried because the proverbial buck stopped with him. The powers that be, the consortium of Arab states that funded the operation, would want to save face. Hafeez had to act and act now. Idle men never saw the sword coming.

“I want the man who planned it,” said Hafeez. “Make it happen, Omar. I want his head on ice and presented to The Consortium. Both you and I are in the chain,” he said pointedly. Omar Asad froze, his stomach almost turning to liquid as he realised that Hafeez would not be going down alone but taking Asad with him kicking and screaming. “That may be enough to placate them.” He paused. “Let us pray to Allah that it will be enough…”

Omar Asad doubted that very much. The Consortium were not to be satisfied that easily and Asad’s only chance to escape the executioner’s sword would be to claim credit for retribution and see that Hafeez stood in front of him. Hafeez was a fat banker and had never known a life on the streets. Omar Asad had grown up on the streets of Tehran and had dodged the Iranian secret police. He had fled to Iraq, and then to Kuwait. Now, he had made Saudi Arabia his home and although he was now a successful businessman, he still had the street rat in him and he could out-wit, out cunning and out manoeuvre the man in front of him. Seniority put Hafeez higher in the chain than Asad, but complacency would see the fat banker fall.

“I have just the man,” said Asad. “No need for you to know more… in fact, the least you know, the better…” he added, taking pleasure in Hafeez’s ignorance. “Leave it with me. The next time we meet, it will be to discuss what to do with Richard Collins’ head…”

Chapter Five

Paris

Collins had awoken refreshed. He had finished the whisky and slept well because of it. The wounds were sore, but he could tell from the feel of them that they were not infected and were healing nicely. He had been injured enough over the years to know what felt right, and what felt wrong. He had once suffered from gangrene in an infected bullet graze in Rwanda and had needed a significant amount of flesh removed from his thigh, and before the surgeon’s expert intervention, the wound had pulsed and throbbed as painfully as if a hammer had been wielded against his femur. Ironically, the man he had tried to kill and was now hunting him had kept Collins alive long enough to make it to the surgeon. Life was a serious of curious events, but Collins had never done sentimentality since the day he had put down his own mother.

Collins had booked and paid for two nights at the hotel, but there was never any intention on his part to remain for the duration. This was a deliberate tactic; he was always meticulous in creating false trails to mislead anyone who might attempt to follow him. The strategy was not new — he had used it during his journey to Paris, ensuring that he was visible on CCTV at the service station and again on the toll roads whilst driving the tiny Fiat. Each step was meticulously calculated, leaving just enough evidence to suggest his presence and movements, but ultimately, these breadcrumbs were merely a diversion. With his preparations in place, Collins was ready to vanish without a trace, erasing his true path behind a web of misleading clues.

Among the clothes that Collins had purchased he had a hoody sweat top and a baseball cap. He donned both along with a pair of fashionably faded and weathered jeans and trainers. This was not his normal attire, and he would change into his second outfit further into his journey. He breakfasted in the café next door to the hotel drinking first an espresso followed by a café au lait and eating two croissants which he dunked into the milky coffee as he watched Paris go by him. He took the subway and then purchased a train ticket at Gare du Nord to Geneva. It was a fast route with no connections and would take around three and a half hours. Once in Switzerland he would have the upper hand and would make certain that he was pinged on any watchlist the British had running through Interpol and the French and Swiss police. Peter Stewart had taught him how to disappear, but he had also taught him how to reappear when the time was right, fooling the enemy into thinking that they had the upper hand.

Chapter Six

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

The room was tortuous in the searing forty-five-degree heat with no air-conditioning and little through draft. Making the room almost bearable was a lazy ceiling fan that operated on a low setting and moved the hot air just enough to make the stifling heat vaguely tolerable. The apartment was a basic three-room affair with a toilet and shower room, and a tiny kitchen with an electric stove and hob and an under-counter fridge. The living room doubled as a bedroom, but all that furnished the room was a single metal bedframe with a thin mattress. There was no television, radio nor sofa. The floor was tiled to alleviate the year-round heat, but it now felt warm under foot, and the single window that only opened a few inches provided little respite. On first appearances, the apartment was little more than a prison cell. Second appearances were much the same as the first.

Abdullah was no prisoner, however. His name translated into English as ‘Servant of God’ and he had been given his name upon completion of his training and his first mission, which was how all students of the organisation graduated. His mission had been to kill an American Jew - a businessman whose weapons and equipment he sold had been used by the IDF to slaughter countless Palestinians in Gaza. Not the most recent slaughter, nor the one before that. There had been too many to count. The American had become exceedingly rich over the past decade, and Abdullah’s masters had decided that it had been time to make a statement. Since the day he had paid the hooker to tie the man to his bed in the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo, then leave so he had time to torture him, film his confessions and slit his throat, Abdullah had fulfilled more than a dozen contracts for his masters. He did not know their names, and nor did he know whether he worked for men committed to Allah, foreign militaries or governments, but he did know that the people he was paid to kill were righteous targets that were enemies of Islam. Not that he would become a rich man doing their work, but he had the apartment and a salary and expenses. He chose his simple life because he saw possessions as a sin, and he hated all excess. He did not drink, for Allah and the Prophet Mohammed forbade it, and he seldom ate more than a few boiled eggs, olives, figs, bread and cheese, and sometimes a little stewed goat. He was painfully thin, though well-muscled and sinewed, and he ran marathon distances twice a week, though never competed in anything so vain as a race. Abdullah practised boxing and judo, and he was an expert in small-arms, favouring the Browning HP35 pistol and an AK-47 rifle. There was a simplicity in his choices. Nothing fancy, nothing commercial and new. To date, he had fulfilled more than half of his contracts with a knife. He favoured the old ways. It amused him how a man faced with having his throat cut would beg for a bullet, when in fact there was no cleaner, swifter death than that of a sharp blade in the hands of an expert.

Abdullah had performed his daily exercises, and both Fajr and sunrise prayers. Like his devout Muslim brothers, he prayed five times a day. He had eaten a meagre breakfast of figs and yogurt and was sitting cross-legged in contemplation on the tiled floor when the envelope slid under his door. As was the procedure, he waited a full five minutes before retrieving the envelope. The letter would direct him to a dedicated email provider through which he would communicate using the draft folder. It would state the username for him to use and the password and he was ordered to memorise both and to burn the letter before leaving his apartment. At the beginning of each assignment, he would purchase a phone and text the number that would be revealed in his brief, and which he would use when he was in the field and unable to use the laptop that his controller had issued to him. He tore open the envelope and unfolded the letter. The number that he would contact his handler through was written in the top right corner. The details were covered in just three lines, and he used his powers of memorisation and recall learning the passwords. He logged onto his computer and tested his memory logging into the account and instructions from memory. In the draft folder an email no longer than half a page contained the details, and a photograph of the target. The Iranian rarely met with his handler and only communicated through text messages and emails in draft folders. Both his own phone and the one used by his handler would be unregistered pay-as-you-go types, commonly referred to as ‘burners’.

Abdullah re-read the information and studied the man’s face in the photograph. The target looked tough, and he already knew that the man was a killer simply by studying his eyes. There was little detail about him other than his approximate height and weight and his last known location. Abdullah would start there and wait for the stream of information to follow by text message and more detailed information in the email draft folder. The people that he worked for were well-connected with various contacts in governments, law enforcement agencies and military. They had people everywhere. Silent sleepers waiting for activation. A loyal army with a common enemy. And a sworn enemy that was over-confident in their position on the world stage, and whom would be asleep when the status quo changed. Abdullah yearned for that day when it came, but for now he was a mere foot soldier fighting small battles for his cause. He looked at the photograph again. There would be no Paradise for a godless infidel like Richard Collins, no Hell, either. For a kafir like him, there would only be purgatory. And Abdullah would send him there by knife or bullet.

Chapter Seven

Geneva, Switzerland

Collins made his way to the lavatory on the train, where he swiftly changed out of his casual street clothes. He replaced his outfit with a pair of cargo trousers, sturdy desert boots, and a practical shirt, finishing the ensemble with a windcheater. The transformation was deliberate; he now blended seamlessly with the crowds of adventurers and hikers heading into Switzerland for the late summer and early autumn hiking and climbing season. Upon arrival, Collins paused briefly on the platform, subtly checking his Breitling pilot’s watch against the station clock. He ensured that his movements were captured by the CCTV cameras, but did so without drawing undue attention to himself, maintaining an air of nonchalance throughout.

At the Europcar office he hired a Mercedes saloon using his fake Irish passport and driving licence. The Irish passport was a powerful document. Ireland did not involve itself in conflicts, remained politically passive and was a member of the European Union. Collins always chose an Irish passport when he could, as well as Australian and German. He never leaned into his African roots, he had left Zimbabwe as a child and had found the South African identity, with the country’s polarising political stance and economic support for Russia, Israel and China to be hardly worth the bother. He was fluent in German and many people assumed when he was speaking English that he was a German speaking a second language.

It was three and a half hours to Zürich by car, but it would take closer to five because he had to make a stop along the way and that would require a stop beforehand at a DIY depot to collect a pick, shovel and drop cloths to save both his clothes and the interior of the Mercedes from mud. It had been many years since he had left the cache, and the passport would be out of date. The Euros predated the 2019 Europa notes and would still be legal tender, but he would have to make certain that he did not spend too much in one place. That suited him though because he would simply use them for food and fuel and the essentials until he collected his money from the bank in Zürich. Inside the cache was an old but well-maintained Sig P210 pistol wrapped in an oiled cloth, and a box of fifty 9mm rounds. He wasn’t sure when he would need the weapon, but he suspected that it would be soon. They would send people to kill him, and he had left a believable trial of breadcrumbs for his enemies to follow.

Chapter Eight

HM Prison Bronzefield, Surrey

“I’ve been hung out to dry…”

Verity Harding regarded her for a moment. Mousey-blonde hair to her shoulders and striking hazel eyes. A determined face that at times bled vulnerability and fragile, delicate features. She glanced down at her file – what little MI5 had afforded her – and slowly raised her eyes to her client. “Miss Darby…”

“Caroline…”

Verity Harding nodded. “Caroline…” She paused. “You are no longer in the employ of the Security Service…”

“I was when I made the call,” she replied tersely. “Right up until the moment that I pulled my weapon and made the decision.”

“A decision that cost a man his life, and your employment.” The barrister paused, checking her notes. “In fact, the current head of the Security Service denies that you were in their employ… a secretive unit that was operating beyond its remit.”

“They paid my salary. Right up to last month. So, someone is full of shit,” she said pointedly, then added, “So if it’s not them, then it must be you…”

“I can assure you that it’s not me,” Verity replied steadfastly.

“Really? It sounds like you’re on a fishing trip for them.”

“I can assure you that I am not, and that my chambers would never stoop to such levels,” she replied indignantly.

Caroline conceded through a slight nod. She was tired, angry and out of her element, and she felt like a pot that would not come off the boil. “Long story short, the man was a known financier for terrorism and enemies of the United Kingdom,” she said. “His bodyguard was armed with a firearm. Illegally, of course, subject to British law. The man who I shot and killed screamed Allah Akbar… in the same manner recognised as a last-ditch effort or sacrifice by terrorists and fundamental extremists…” Caroline took a deep breath. She had lost her fiancée, Peter Redwood in the same manner. Had that influenced her decision to pull the trigger? Undoubtedly. But she wasn’t going to get into that with her barrister. Not yet at least. “… and then he whipped out his phone and pointed it at me. I had fractions of a second to react and respond and made the call. The phone was boxy-looking, not like a modern smartphone, and it was black. I was one-hundred-percent positive that it was a gun.”

“And so, you shot and killed an unarmed man…”

“Hold on, that was the long of it. I still haven’t got to the short part…” Caroline said coldly. “I have worked for the Security Service for more than ten years under four directors and two departments and you can go back to Thames House and tell them that if they don’t pull their thumbs out of their arses and get me the hell out of here, then there are a great many organisations, including the international press and governments that are going to get a full description of the work I have been involved in, and who was directly behind each operation.”

“And contravene the Official Secrets Act, which you have signed and sworn to operate by?” Verity shook her head in much the same way a poker player suspects they have the winning hand. “That’s a lot of years in prison.”

“I guess I’ll be in prison for many years if I’m convicted of these bullshit charges, so what the hell… I just as well get hung for a sheep as a lamb…”

The barrister chuckled to herself. “I believe you,” she replied. “But I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“I’ve had worse odds.”

“I believe you have.”

“I don’t bluff, either. You tell the mandarins that if they don’t back me up and make this bullshit disappear, then they’ll be answering to select committees and the Public Prosecution Service long after they should have cashed in their pensions.” She paused. “I will also be filing a civil lawsuit.”

“That would be expensive.”

Caroline smiled. “I have the funds at my disposal to cover the costs.”

“Really?” Verity frowned. “The credit search showed…” She leafed through the file, then paused on the page. “Fifty-thousand spread across three accounts, an additional twenty-thousand in Premium Bonds, and a flat in Camden Loch… worth four-hundred thousand, with one-hundred thousand pounds left on the remainder of the mortgage. Oh, and a Mini Cooper worth approximately twelve-thousand pounds on the used car market, and yacht undergoing extensive refurbishment in Altea, Spain.”

“That’s legitimate. But then there’s the spoils of war,” Caroline replied. “Never underestimate the power of stockpiled gold.”

“I’m sure that HMRC would love to know more about that…”

“I never said it was mine. I don’t have to pay my own legal fees, and neither can the Crown Prosecution Service refuse third party involvement if my defence relies upon outside financial assistance. Trust me, if the service take me on, then they will lose. I won’t go away quietly, and I will sue them if they continue to deny my employment status and hang me out to dry.”

Verity Harding nodded sagely. “You are certainly one tough cookie, aren’t you,” she stated flatly. “I can see this won’t be an easy ride. However, I will take on your case, and I will fight for you like a bull terrier in a traveller site pit who’s just had a Pekinese thrown into the dog fighting pit…” she smiled. “Speaking of which, I’ve just met with the legal team from Thames House and I’m confident that we can get a favourable outcome.”

Caroline nodded. “Don’t be fooled so easily,” she replied. “That place is built on lies and subterfuge. The team you meet with may not end up being the same team you go up against in court.”

“I’m aware of that,” Verity replied. She stood up, slipping the file into a backpack to which a cycle helmet hung from its strap. “I’ll be in touch,” she said confidently.

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Caroline. “But I want you to do something for me.”

“What’s that?” the Barrister replied, somewhat taken aback. She wasn’t in the habit of running errands for her clients. Caroline’s own solicitor was her point of contact for seeing to matters of her concern.

“Don’t ride your bicycle until after the case.”

“What?” she asked tersely.

“Cycling is dangerous, that’s all.”

“Are you saying that I’m in danger?”

Caroline shrugged. “You’re going up against the establishment, Ms Harding…”

“Verity, please…”

Caroline nodded. “Verity, let me tell you something. The Security Service has undergone many changes, many new directors in recent years. I’ve worked for some great directors and deputies. Charles Forrester, Simon Merewether, Neil Ramsay… decent people who were patriots and believers in democracy. But there have always been desk chiefs and deputies who were not so morally stable. The Security Service have officers who handle general security. Often referred to as the Dogs, they’re not watchers or field agents, but they do what they do to secure assets, properties and generally guard the Security Service from our enemies. Usually ex-infantry, big on muscle and short on intellect, they wouldn’t be opposed to going the extra mile for a desk chief looking to make a problem disappear….”

“Assassins, you mean?” Verity Harding appeared shocked at the notion.

“Not routinely, no. But would one of them have a problem swerving a van into a cyclist in rush-hour traffic for a few extra quid, or a credit with a desk chief? Maybe so…”

“This is the sort of behaviour that got Neil Ramsay removed and his new department… the department that you worked for… closed down and disbanded.”

Caroline chuckled and shook her head. “Nobody I ever worked with would do such a thing,” she said adamantly. “But they may have gone into Russia and stolen a prototype helicopter, or put a defector onboard a submarine in the Arctic, or hunted an assassin down in South Africa…” She smiled. “You might want to drop a few of those into the conversation when you meet with the legal guys at Thames House…” She paused. “Can I have a pen and a piece of paper?” she asked and waited for Verity to hand both to her. Caroline scribbled down a name and mobile number. “This man is like a brother to me. I’d trust him with my life and have done on multiple occasions. He has agreed to shadow you until the trial is over. I’ve told him that I’ll pay his expenses, but I doubt he’d even think about it…” Caroline watched, noticing how the colour had drained from the woman’s face. Verity Harding, KC, had been confident and exuded both charisma and professionalism when she had first met Caroline just over a week ago. She had been the same woman an hour previously, but not any longer. She half expected the barrister to change her mind and suggest another legal counsel.

“I don’t need a bodyguard,” she said eventually.

“You do, Verity. And what’s more, you need to start watching your back, checking the road before you cross, don’t walk in the shadows and keep your doors and windows locked. My man will take care of the rest…”

Chapter Nine

Zürich

There were fifteen years of his blood profits in the Zimmermann & Strauss Bank, although it felt like a lifetime to Richard Collins. He had started using the bank for his ill-gotten gains – both in a high-interest account and safe deposit box. The box contained a twelve-carat blood diamond, a one-kilo gold bar and just over one hundred-thousand-pounds in various currencies. He also had three unused Rolex watches, boxed and with papers, because of all the brands they seldom lost any value and were easily sold because of the company’s supply and demand policy of shorting orders. Back when he had bought them there were no waiting lists that took years, and he could easily raise forty-thousand euros from them within the hour. The safe deposit box also contained a selection of fake passports. Collins always favoured fakes over forgeries and had chosen his legends well. Some were the passports of people he had killed who had looked like him – similar enough at least using hair dye and various hairstyles or facial hair – and others were passports that he had cultivated using forged or doctored identities. In his numbered only account, Collins held over four-million pounds and all of it had escaped taxation and the knowledge of any government, institution or individual outside of the bank’s four walls.

Franz Lipperman was a man who had given his life over to the Zimmermann & Strauss Bank and had seen his fair share of clients over the years from celebrities seeking tax avoidance to African dictators hiding their nation’s reserves, but he had never felt so uneasy in another man’s presence as he had with Richard Collins. There was something unnerving about the man’s eyes, something almost feral in his expression, and something purposeful in the man’s gait. A cat-like quality that exuded stealth, and yet a ferocity of movement waiting impatiently to be unleashed. A man with too much nervous energy. After escorting Collins through to the safe deposit room and opening the deadlocks to his box with two separate keys, he stepped back to allow his client some privacy to use the electronic keypad, then escorted him to the curtained booth in which there were no cameras and no time limit for the clients of Zimmermann & Strauss Bank to inspect their wealth and secrets.

Collins placed the titanium drawer on the table. The drawer was essentially a box measuring 60cm x 30cm x 20cm with a 60cm hinged lid. He opened the lid just enough to slide his index finger inside and unhooked the wire that he had fastened to the hinge of the lid. Connected to the other end of the wire was a white phosphorus hand grenade that would melt the contents, along with anybody standing near. Collins always took precautions, and he did not care who would be caught up in the aftermath. He lifted out the passports and flicked through them. Some of the identities would require specialist alterations to his appearance, so he took three that mirrored his look, then removed thick wads of US dollars and euros to the sum of fifty-thousand-pound sterling. The diamonds, gold, watches and the rest of the money could remain for a rainy day. Or at least when it was pissing down. Right now, he had to keep his options open and have a back-up plan. He pocketed the passports and wads of money, then as he was about to re-attach the wire arming the hand grenade, he had a change of heart and unfastened the grenade, slipping it into his pocket. When he stepped back outside the booth, Franz Lipperman got up from his seat near the bank of deposit boxes and smiled tentatively as he took the box from him and inserted it back in place. He used both keys simultaneously, then stood aside and looked the other way for Collins to type in the six-digit code to secure the electronic lock. Collins thought the need superfluous, as the bank would indeed have a method to get into the boxes in the event of a client’s death or the box being dormant for a certain period, and he smiled cruelly as he thought of the grenade in his pocket when it could very well have melted the bespectacled clerk’s hands to the deposit box under a brilliant white flame of 800°c. Such would have been the intensity of the flames he imagined that there would have been little left of the man who had always viewed him with such disdain under a mirthless smile.

Outside, Collins appreciated the wonderfully clean Swiss air and took the steps down to the pavement. He had parked the Mercedes up the street and was drawing close to it when he noticed the man watching him. He had been around the block enough to know when someone was watching with purpose, and the man displayed all the signs. He had accidentally made eye contact and was doing his best to appear uninterested while making sure not to lose him. Years of experience had enabled him to notice what mattered and he had the man down as being of Persian descent, around thirty-years of age – no older than thirty-four, no younger than twenty-seven – because in the short time he had observed him he had noticed the lines on his brow and the crow’s feet around his eyes. Dark eyes, but that went with the Persian features and colouring, short hair which looked military style, and from the distance between the 5 Series BMW’s roof and the man’s head, he had him down as six-foot-tall at least. Small to medium build – much like Collins himself – lythe and wiry, a purposeful physique with stamina. He also spotted something in those few seconds. The eyes of a killer.

Collins still had fifty metres to go. He reached into his pocket and unlocked the vehicle with the key fob. The pistol was loaded and made ready, but it was inside the glovebox, and the man was parked between himself and the Mercedes, so it was pointless fixating on the pistol. He needed to try something else instead. He quickly crossed the road, changing the man’s arc of fire. This would be the test. If the man really was about to attack him, then he would need to get a clear aim, and place himself in a more favourable position for when Collins walked past him.

It was on.

The man swivelled in his seat and Collins saw the Browning 9mm pistol and suppressor in the man’s hand, but the weapon was unwieldy – an old school automatic made from steel and a suppressor as long as the pistol and half as much again - and the passenger headrest momentarily blocked his aim. Collins sprinted past the vehicle and darted to his left, forcing the man to swivel in his seat. Collins would have done it differently. He wouldn’t have tried to kill an experienced assassin whilst sat on his arse for a start. As the man gave up on his position and opened the driver’s door, Collins pulled out the phosphorus grenade and pulled the pin. He released the spoon – the spring-loaded safety handle – and it spun off over his shoulder clattering on the ground. Collins had already started the count. One-thousand-and-one… one-thousand-and-two… one-thousand-and-three… He rolled the grenade alongside the vehicle and sprinted across the road for the Mercedes. The fizz of the chemical reaction ignited behind him, and even in the bright sunlight the intensity of the white phosphorus cast fresh shadows across the street. Collins already had the vehicle unlocked and reached across the seat for the glovebox and snatched up the Sig 9mm pistol. When he looked for his target, he could see the ferocity of the fire that had engulfed the BMW. He clambered out of the vehicle, his weapon sighted on the flames as he searched for the man, then realised that he had got out of the car just in time and was indeed sprinting down the pavement. The man had a good lead, so pursuing on foot would be a fruitless task. Collins got back inside the Mercedes and wedged the pistol between the seat bolster and the centre console as he started the vehicle and floored the accelerator. The powerful turbo-charged engine had the vehicle up to sixty-miles-per-hour within six seconds, and the gap closed dramatically. The man darted to his left down a side road, but as Collins slammed on the brakes to follow, he darted back out, dropped to one knee and fired steady, well-aimed shots. The windscreen spider-webbed as the 9mm bullets punched cleanly through the glass, and Collins was showered in splinters of glass. He swerved violently and careened across the road, the sound of the bullets hitting the bodywork sounding like somebody pounding upon the metal with a hammer. The Mercedes crashed violently into a row of parked cars, the airbags initiating and filling the cabin with white smoke and residue before the silence enveloped Collins with a macabre finality. He had dropped the gun and when he looked up, he watched the man striding confidently towards him, changing to a new magazine. Collins struggled to unwrap himself from the deflated airbags and clawed for the gun in the footwell. When he finally snatched it up the man was close enough to see the whites of his eyes. Sirens filled the air. Too soon to have been called for the explosion and vehicle fire. A nearby patrol car responding to the alarm being raised. But it was enough for the man to look away from his prey, and Collins responded with a barrage of gunfire. The man went down, but he returned fire as he fell. Collins lost sight of him, his vision obscured by the passenger door. When he clambered out of the vehicle, he could see that the man had disappeared. Collins reached back into the open glovebox and changed to a new magazine, then stepped off the pavement into the street. There was no sign of the man, and more alarmingly, not a single trace of blood. Collins cursed loudly. The man had been wearing a bullet-proof vest. A suppressor and a ballistic vest. Clearly a professional. But who the hell had taken out a contract on him? As the police patrol car entered the street Collins reflected that the list could be potentially endless. He held the weapon by his side and took out one of the passports, holding the photo page up for them to see as any plain clothes police officer of government agent would. The patrol car slowed and as it stopped in front of him. The passenger got out, and Collins calmly raised the pistol and shot him through the head. The police officer’s body hadn’t even hit the ground, and Collins had the pistol aimed at the driver’s head.

“Get out…” he ordered. The officer had both hands raised, and Collins opened the door for him and stood back a pace. The Officer started to plead for his life but did not finish as the bullet tore through his forehead. Collins helped himself to the man’s Sig Sauer P226 pistol and the two spare magazines before taking his place behind the wheel of the car. He needed to get away from here, and he needed to do it quickly. He would have to abandon the identity used for hiring the Mercedes, and once the city’s CCTV had been scrutinised, he doubted that he would be able to access his box at the Zimmermann & Strauss Bank again. He reckoned he had less than an hour to transfer the funds he held in his account there to his British Virgin Islands account, so good internet access was his number one priority.

Chapter Ten

The sun shimmered on the mirrored surface of the Aegean Sea and even wearing the pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses that he had purchased just hours before in the duty free at Gatwick, King found himself squinting at the intensity of the light. There was something about the light in the Greek Islands, the purity of it that made it utterly unique. The sun occupied a cloudless sky, searing and relentless and it was difficult to see where the ocean met the sky on an ambiguous horizon. Cicadas electrified the wispy pines and poplars, and tiny lizards scurried from King’s boots as he climbed the natural steps in the cliff path worn over millennia by erosion and footsteps alike. This was harsh territory that had been tamed by stubborn mankind. Below King the horseshoe cove was the beginning and the end for weary fishermen. Small boats had been launched and hauled back over the pebbles for thousands of years, the only difference now being the smoky, oily outboard engines and the nylon nets hanging for repair from the cliffs. The houses and fishing huts had probably changed little, too. Now painted a brilliant white reflected the punishing sun, with a few of the buildings fitted with satellite dishes and air-conditioning units. This was a quiet island with little tourism but for a few cheap Airbnb properties on the northern side and a campsite popular with gap-year students and new age hippies alike. King could see reason in Collins choosing this island. No crowds, no regular police presence – the island fell under the jurisdiction of the larger island of Milos – and the man would be able to secure his base, guard himself from attack. However, the remote, anonymous location could also be the man’s undoing. King had found him easily because the locals all knew about the stranger living on their island, who ran the cliffs and swam in the bays to keep fit, who bought freshly landed fish from the cove and who queued for bread and vegetables at the island’s daily market. They knew that he had purchased the tiny fisherman’s cottage, or syrmata, nestled into the cliff on the east side of the island. When the ninety-year-old fisherman had died in his sleep, his family – now living on the mainland – had put the property up for auction and a few months later the man they called ‘The Hermit’ had arrived and other than a few fishermen and the woman on the vegetable stall and the old baker, and the family who ran the island’s only convenience store had spoken to nobody else in two months. In a small island community, this was both noticeable and controversial.

King had always known that the best place to hide was in a crowd, and as he drew closer to the next cove – where he had been reliably informed was where ‘The Hermit’s’ house was hewn into the cliffs – his suspicions were confirmed. Collins was sitting on a roughly finished concrete terrace just a few feet above the calm sea, a cotton sheet spread out like a sail above his head to afford him some shade. He was reading a paperback and beside him a bottle of some sort of clear spirit and a glass. King watched him for longer than he should have, wondering whether this was the fate of assassins who had been hung out to dry. The life of a hermit until they sent a man to kill you. Either way, it didn’t look good, and he knew that he needed a better retirement plan than Collins.

King did not check the CZ75 pistol that was tucked into his belt. He had loaded the 9mm pistol and made it ready earlier on the island of Crete where it had been waiting for him buried in the gravely sand like pirate treasure. A text message with detailed instructions had led him to the weapon, and it had been wrapped in an oiled cloth and sealed inside a plastic freezer bag. King estimated the distance to Collins and his rough elevation. He figured on a hundred metres with fifty metres of drop. Could he put some rounds on the target with those figures? Certainly. On paper, at least. But at a human target, it was another matter entirely. Not worth the risk. Especially when the target was a highly trained assassin. Still, there was no other alternative. The sea was so clear, so crystalline that King could not hope to swim up to Collins, and the man had a full view of the cliff. A rifle would have made all the difference, but he was working on the fly, and he couldn’t have carried even a disassembled rifle to the island on the tiny water taxi. He checked the opposite cliff, then looked back at Collins, but the man was no longer there. King felt a flutter in his stomach and a surge of adrenaline. If Collins had gone inside the tiny house, then he had a chance to descend the cliff and get closer. He dropped his day sack on the rocks and started down the cliff path. It would have been easy for a mountain goat, but a lot trickier for King, who settled on leaping down every few steps, his desert boots taking the impact out of the soles of his feet. The steps had been cut from flat rocks and worn smooth over time. Islanders would have traversed the path for hundreds if not thousands of years, but likely not as rapidly as King as he rushed to get out of Collins’ line of sight when he returned to his shady seat and half-finished bottle.

King drew the pistol when he was on the last few steps and dropped into the shade. There were no windows on the cliff side of the syrmata. A fisherman only cared about the sea. King caught his breath in the shade; his weapon trained on the side of the building. Edging nearer, he kept checking the other side anxious that he had nobody to cover his rear. There was a time when Collins would have taken care of that, and the two men had worked together as a formidable team.

Collins was back in his deckchair, the makeshift sail billowing above his head. He had the glass in his left hand, and the bottle was on the ground casting a long shadow towards King.

“I was wondering who they would send,” said Collins.

“And I always knew…” King commented flatly as he walked around the concrete terrace and put the sun behind his back, forcing Collins to squint into the sun.

“I was always better than you.”

“And yet I’m the one with a gun in my hand…”

Collins raised his glass slowly. “To the delicious taste of death…” he said, then took a sip. “And to the assassin’s aim… steady and true…”

“Steady and true…” King said quietly, his grip tightening on the pistol as he minutely adjusted his aim.

“And one last drink?” Collins smiled and brought the glass to his lips. “One for the road, so to speak…”

King allowed his former colleague and comrade the curtesy and watched as the man knocked back the drink, but before he had drained the glass, he dropped it clumsily and it fell to the ground, catching the light before it smashed on the concrete. Smoke and mirrors. Balls and cups. The sleight of hand had taken King’s concentration – only momentarily, but it had been enough. Collins had the tiny automatic in his hand and King knew as he adjusted his aim that the man had set his own sights on him fractionally quicker. He saw the muzzle flash, heard the gunshot and felt the bite of the bullet as he squeezed the trigger. Two more gunshots and King staggered backwards, losing his footing and falling into the water…

King shivered at the memory, as sudden and involuntarily as dreaming of falling and snapping awake. The memory had been indelibly imprinted in his mind ever since Collins had fallen into the Thames. The two men’s fates being so similar at the other’s hands. He had thought the memory long-forgotten. Until Collins had raised his head again and things had changed forever. Now he thought of little else. He looked out at the lake before him and sipped the tea, wincing at the foul taste.

King knew that he had been close. Ever since he had fired and Richard Collins had tumbled off the edge of Tower Bridge and into the filthy waters of the River Thames, he had been on the man’s trail. He had first headed down river and checked the many beaches and mudbanks of the lower waters, using an Ordinance Survey map to work out where a body would be most likely to wash-up. There was much to consider – not only depth, flow and bends in the river – but outflows and eddies and whirlpools that were formed when the current was disrupted by struts and piers and quays. He had liaised with the river police and coastguard to seek their advice and had checked every possibility right down to the marshes, estuary and out to the cold waters of the North Sea. Both the river police and coastguard had also informed King that bodies washed back and forth with the tide and a submerged body could aften take weeks to reach the sea, and that could take even longer in the winter months when the water temperature was barely above freezing in the depths. King had doubled his efforts, but as the hours turned to days and then to over a week with little sleep, he had given up the task as a bad lot.

The trail had gone cold in Paris. Despite his team disbanding and Caroline left languishing in prison while on remand, King still had an inside line with the police. He had met DI Grant during his last operation/investigation in Cornwall, and the man had obliged in keeping King informed. An assault and vehicle theft had created a red flag and using the PNC, or Police National Computer, DI Grant had enough to point King to Dover. From there, taking the ferry to Calais was the only plausible move to make. Grant had liaised with Interpol and an old contact in the French Police Service to gain access to CCTV footage and Collins had sparked facial recognition in Paris, Geneva and Zürich. King had enough to head to Zürich, but he wasn’t playing Collins’ game. He had learned the same skills from the same mentor. The trail to Paris was one thing, but the trail to Zürich was quite another. Collins wanted King to follow him. He was acting like game, but King knew that the man was every inch the predator. If Collins had made himself visible, then he was doing it for a reason. King knew that if he went after the man in Zürich, then he would likely find the muzzle of a gun in the nape of his neck with Collins’ finger on the trigger.

King took in the yachts and speedboats bobbing gently on the surface of Lake Geneva. He had been here before. Many times. He had a wealth of memories to pull on – some good, some bad – but he could think of little more than the man he had followed here to kill. Collins was a cancer. He could not be ignored. There was no moving forward without cutting that cancer out. King sipped his cup of tea, screwing up his nose at the establishment’s idea of an ‘English breakfast tea’, and he rather envied coffee drinkers with their standardised drinks. For a start, the cup had arrived with the hot water already poured and the teabag sealed in its package on the saucer. Tea could only be effectively brewed when boiling water was poured onto leaves or a teabag. Now he had to put the teabag into the water, which by now was way below boiling point, and watch as it failed to brew. He stirred and pressed and poked at the submerged bag with his spoon, but little colour bled from the bag and when he added a splash of milk, he ended up with a murky, milky drink that reminded him of Ovaltine in appearance. The café only served large, brown, unrefined sugar cubes and he dropped one in and stirred, but by now the liquid was merely tepid and the sugar refused to dissolve. It was looking very different from his idea of a good ‘builder’s tea’ and leaving the bag in place and with the sugar still in a solid state, he took another sip and screwed up his face in distaste once more. At the table next to him a young woman received her Cappuccino and upon her first sip seemed thoroughly enamoured by it. King took another sip, and it was no better than the first or second, but he thought briefly of the cold night he had once spent curled up in a culvert in Afghanistan with half the Taliban on his trail when he had shivered in the darkness and brewed up a hot, sweet tea in a mess tin over a single firelighter with no milk and only his own piss for water. He had come a long way since then and after his fourth sip he decided to get on with it and quit being so precious. King sighed as he looked out across the water. Was he growing soft? Curmudgeonly about the way something so unimportant as a cup of tea had been served? Or holding back from going full-throttle after Richard Collins in Zürich? Wiser, perhaps. But by no means soft. The tea was one thing, but backing off his pursuit of Collins was valid. King knew the man to be a cunning son-of-a-bitch, and following blindly had cost him once before. He rubbed his side distractedly. Three bullets. He had been lucky to survive. Had he dropped his own weapon, then he would have died that day. As it was, he had more bullets than Collins had, and his weapon had greater range and power. He had fired back at the man, sculling on his back through the crimson water as Collins had danced and dodged for cover under a hail of bullets. The rest was now a blur. A small fishing boat, rough pairs of hands pulling him clear of the water, a wild taxi ride, nurses and doctors and rushing around him, waking up in a room that had smelled musty with the dull beige paint peeling from the walls, Peter Stewart scowling at him from a chair in the corner of the room. King had felt a riot of emotions. Fear, anger, disappointment, embarrassment – he had wanted to redeem himself at any cost, but by the time Collins resurfaced the mood had shifted and the former MI6 agent was serving in the Australian military and the order to kill him never came.

King took his phone out of his pocket as it alerted him of an incoming text. It was from DI Grant, and the news of the shootout on the steps of the bank in Zürich made him frown. The message included a link, and King opened it and watched for several minutes. The CCTV footage was clear, and various cameras had captured the angles from the moment Collins had ducked down and rolled the grenade. The ensuing skirmish showed that both men had skill – not that he doubted Collins for a second – and he watched as the unknown gunman retreated, and Collins calmly executed the two Swiss police officers. It was a cold and calculated act, and King knew in that moment that he had not been wrong to resist storming into Zürich after Collins. If he was going to kill his enemy, then he would need to plan it accordingly. Collins had lightning-fast reflexes, and some things couldn’t simply be left to chance. But one thing was clear: King wasn’t the only man after Collins. And that gave him an idea.

Chapter Eleven

Zürich

Abdullah had found sanctuary in the toilets of a nearby restaurant where he had ripped off the bullet-proof vest and checked his stomach and chest for over-penetration. The vest held five, 9mm bullets that had all been trapped in the strands of Kevlar. He had been lucky. Cursing loudly as he checked the bruises in the mirror, he splashed water over his face and washed his hands before kneeling and muttering, “Astaghfirullah…” three times to beg forgiveness from Allah for the sin of profanity. Purified once more, he got back on his feet, reloaded the pistol and removed the suppressor. The mirror did not hide the abject misery on his face, and he found himself looking away in embarrassment, unable to hold his own stare. He had failed. The organisation had links to various governments through law enforcement, military and intelligence agencies, and he had been given a task of simplicity. He had been informed where the target was, and from there his actions should have been simple. But the man had known he was there. A sixth-sense, perhaps. Richard Collins had caught sight of him, and the man had accessed the situation and reacted accordingly. Had he underestimated his prey? Undoubtedly. Would he do so again? Never. His time would come again. Collins would trip the security protocols before long, and the text message would tell Abdullah where to find his prey. He would not fail again.

Chapter Twelve

Kensington, London

Verity Harding had not heeded Caroline’s warning and had ridden home on her bicycle as she always did in all but the darkest, coldest and wettest months. She had not seen the two men in the highly-polished, black Range Rover who had hung back and followed. Had they wanted to, then they could have mowed her down and ended it right there, but they had other plans. When Verity pushed her bicycle up the three limestone steps to her first-floor flat in the four-storey Georgian townhouse, the Range Rover pulled to the kerb and a man pushing fifty and fifteen stone got out of the passenger seat and crossed the pavement, his open suit jacket flapping in the cool early autumn breeze, exposing two stone of potbelly. He was a big man, strong but his fitness had waned in recent years, and he didn’t stay off beer, bread and chips. He was ex-army, and he worked in the security element of the Security Service. He wasn’t a man you called upon to trail a Russian spy or a terrorist cell, but he was one of many who guarded MI5’s buildings, assets and properties. The security guards were often referred to as The Dogs, because they were aggressive and tended to go into situations with sheer aggression and little thought because the men and women who had university degrees, or had served at the highest echelons of military or police did the thinking and planning, and The Dogs did the heavy lifting.

“Miss Harding…” he called as he reached the bottom steps.

Verity Harding turned around and looked at him curiously, her house keys in one hand and steadying the bicycle with the other. “Yes?”

“I’m advising you not to take Caroline Darby’s case,” he said gruffly.

“Who are you?”

“Just a concerned individual,” he replied. “I wouldn’t want to see you getting hurt…”

“Me neither…” a voice came from behind him, two octaves lower and a whole lot more intimidating.

The man turned aggressively, as someone with both size and authority was always keen to show, but his attitude mellowed when he looked up at six-foot-four and eighteen stone of big, black Fijian muscle. “Who the hell are you…?”

Big Dave smiled and said, “I’m the guy giving you a choice today…”

“And what the hell is that?”

“Get in your Chelsea tractor and fuck off…” the big Fijian said calmly. “Or I’ll break your wrist. I don’t like men intimidating women on their front doorsteps.”

The man smiled as his partner got out from behind the wheel of the Range Rover and crossed the pavement to stand beside him. “I don’t think you will…”

The second man was younger than his partner and a great deal fitter looking with the tips of tattoos showing at his shirt collar. He looked like he would never be comfortable in a suit, and Big Dave supposed the recruitment standards were slipping, but then again, The Dogs were a low-brow bunch.

“I’ve had enough of talking,” Big Dave told them. “Now, get in your vehicle and get back to Thames House and have a word with your boss. Caroline Darby is a fully paid-up member of the Security Service and I’m advising whoever is pulling your strings to give this shit up as a bad lot and get behind her. Back her and stop playing silly little games that they’re not going to win.”

“Yeah, that isn’t going to happen…” the younger man said.

Big Dave nodded, then shuffled forwards with lightning speed for such a big man and caught hold around the man’s throat with both hands, lifting him off his feet and smashing his head into the other man’s face before dropping his unconscious body onto the pavement. Both men were out cold as Big Dave went through their pockets and took out their wallets and studied their ID’s. He noted both names and tossed the wallets on top of them. He barely broke stride as he climbed the limestone steps and held out his right hand to greet Verity. “The name’s Lomu, but my friends call me Big Dave,” he said. “Caroline asked me to be your bodyguard.”

Verity Harding took his mighty paw in her delicate hand and looked past him at the two inert bodies on the ground, then said, “And not a moment too soon, evidently…”

Chapter Thirteen

Verity Harding’s flat was prime property in undoubtedly one of the best parts of town, but despite the opulence and good taste in the furnishings and décor, it was the home of a woman who spent little time there. Big Dave noticed, as she struggled with the barista quality coffee machine, that the kitchen had been barely used, and he already knew from his intelligence gathering and due diligence exercise that she had lived at the address for four years. More than enough time to christen the stove.

Verity did not have any tea, so Big Dave took the coffee. He could drink both, but he wasn’t an afficionado and opted for a white americano.

“That was quite something,” she said, the relief clearly noticeable in her voice.

“Yeah, they’ll both have a bit of a headache, that’s for sure.” He paused. “Anyway, they’ve taken off now. I checked while you were grinding or toasting your coffee beans. What’s wrong with a cup of instant, anyway?”

Verity laughed. “It’s the height of sophistication to turn your kitchen into a Lavazza coffee stall, you know…” She paused. “I rent the place, and the coffee machine came with it.”

“Well, you must do exceptionally well,” he replied, taking a sip of his coffee. He already knew the answer to that, of course. Checking the woman’s tax records and bank accounts had been part of his due diligence, and she was self-employed, like all the silks were in her chambers.

“I am successful, yes.” She paused, almost embarrassed at admitting it. “But it’s got more to do with justice and fairness than money. I was named Verity, which means truth, and from an early age it was always instilled in me to value the truth, as well as trust and faith. My parents did not come from a legal background, but it was always talked about that I should go down that path because of the importance of truth.”

“It’s vital work,” he agreed. “We all need the truth. Life is incredibly dark without it.”

“And you work for the British Security Service?” Verity asked, her tone edged with judgement and disdain. “The same as those thugs out on the street?”

Big Dave couldn’t help but smile at his own lapse in vigilance. He realised he had been too easily swayed by Verity’s charm, her appearance, and her warmth — and this exchange offered him a glimpse into how formidable she must be in the courtroom. Clearly, Verity was not someone who shied away from confrontation. This was reassuring for Caroline’s sake, but Big Dave silently resolved not to let his guard down again.

“No. Nothing like them, actually,” he replied. “I came into the service as a contractor, then I was made official. Not long after, I began working with Caroline in a new unit with a different remit. That was shortly after the Security Service suffered a major breach — the firewalls were compromised and data was leaked.” He hesitated, unsure how much detail to provide, but trusted that Caroline would have already briefed Verity on the essentials. “That unit was eventually shut down. So, I suppose you could say that I’m presently between careers.”

Verity smiled. “Well, you’re doing pretty good so far as a bodyguard…” she said warmly, and he believed gratefully given how threatening the two men had been. Was she taking him in again? He wasn’t sure, but he would be ready from now on. She took out her phone and dialled, then shrugged when the phone in Big Dave’s pocket vibrated. “Just checking,” she said, then added, “You can’t be too careful.”

“You’re going to make my job a whole lot easier,” he grinned.

Verity sipped her coffee, leaving a little foam from her cappuccino on the tip of her aquiline nose. Big Dave found it endearing as the woman who made close to ten times his former salary asked, “So, what’s the plan?”

“You’ve got a little something on your nose…”

“Oh!” she shrieked, quite horrified. She wiped it away, then smiled. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, I thought you meant a bogie…”

Big Dave laughed. “That’s so funny,” he observed. “A barrister at the top of her game worried about a bit of snot on her nose in front of a stranger…”

“Well, we’re no longer strangers,” she said coyly.

“It’s a good job it’s just a bit of frothy milk, then,” Big Dave said as he looked at her. Big Dave had taken a moment to observe Verity Harding as she arrived. He appreciated her appearance, noting that although he found her attractive, his primary focus remained on the job at hand. Verity stood at five foot five, her slim frame complemented by curves in all the right places. She wore a black trouser suit that fit her perfectly, accentuating her figure in a way that was both professional and flattering. Earlier, he had watched her cycling through the city, and even with her safety gear—a cycle helmet, an orange reflector sash, and trouser clips—she somehow managed to avoid looking foolish. Instead, she carried herself with a confidence and poise that set her apart, regardless of what she wore. He had noticed the Range Rover following her and he knew the type of man behind the wheel. MI5 was a large organisation, and there were key people that he had never met, and he had always served at the sharp end, only entering the building a few times in the entire time that he was on their books. He knew about the security guards known as The Dogs but had never crossed paths with them. The larger of the two men looked the type, though, and he could recognise a man bolstered by his own ego and the perception of power that his role gave him when he saw one. He imagined that the man had been a colour sergeant or a sergeant major in a regular infantry battalion, but had never served in the special forces, or seen active service. Military police, perhaps. Used to giving orders and throwing his weight around with little recourse. Caroline had confided her worries to him, but he had not anticipated that the service would move so swiftly. Though she had instructed him to wait for Verity’s call, he had chosen to act without delay. In his mind, when someone required protection, there was no time for formality or scheduling — it was an immediate necessity. He had taken it upon himself to gather information about Verity Harding, making thorough use of the computer and database resources available through Neil Ramsay. As a result, he now possessed a comprehensive understanding of her career and much of her private affairs. While the intimate details of her personal life remained a mystery to him, anything officially documented or recorded was now within his reach.

“I don’t know anything about you,” Verity said eventually. “If you are going to protect me, then I should at least know something about you.”

“It doesn’t usually work like that…” he replied.

“Oh…”

He looked at her and shrugged. There was something about her that made him want to tell her about himself, and as he started to speak he knew he was crossing a line but couldn’t help himself. “I grew up in Fiji,” he told her.

“Sounds idyllic.”

“It’s a poor country,” he replied. “We lived in a small fishing village where the families brought up all the kids communally. I was sixteen when a Royal Naval vessel anchored in the bay and recruited boys and young men for the British Army. It seemed like an adventure…”

“They did that?” she exclaimed. She frowned as she looked at him. “But you’re not that old…”

“Thanks.”

“I mean… well, that just seems like outdated colonial behaviour!”

“Wait until you hear all about Diego Garcia…” he said sardonically.

“Understood,” she conceded. “It’s out-dated, that’s all.”

“It still goes on. In fact, one in ten of all British soldiers are foreign nationals.” He paused. “But I have no regrets. I travelled the world, served the Commonwealth and made great friends and memories along the way. And I like to think I made a difference in a good way.”

She didn’t reply immediately but gave a slight nod, and he found himself questioning whether her silence was simply a diplomatic gesture. He recognised this reaction — the guardedness of civilians who often failed to appreciate the sacrifices made by the military, the very people whose efforts ensured they could sleep peacefully in their beds. It was, he thought, the prerogative of a pacifist to withhold judgement or comment. The irony of the moment was not lost on him. After a stretch of silence that lingered just a bit too long, she finally spoke. “But your work with the Security Service has undoubtedly helped in the fight against terrorism.”

Big Dave thought of the death toll, not only amongst their own, but the enemy. He supposed it had; sometimes he wasn’t so sure. That was why he hadn’t followed blindly into Ramsay’s next venture. A period of self-reflection. “Small wins, big victories,” he said standing up. He caught Verity staring at his open jacket, and the butt of the pistol poking out of the concealed-carry holster. “Just in case…” he said wryly.

“And highly illegal,” she said measuredly. “I won’t break the law in defending Ms Darby.”

Big Dave shrugged. “I’ve spent much of my time in the special forces and Security Service dipping both sides of the law, and I won’t stop now if it means keeping you alive to defend my friend.”

Verity sighed. “Are we not being somewhat melodramatic? I mean, a couple of heavies warning me off a case is one thing, but actually crossing the line and harming me? Well, that’s quite another thing entirely.”

Big Dave shrugged. “Well, if you don’t mind… I’m going to stick around a while and hope you prove me wrong.”

Chapter Fourteen

HM Prison Bronzefield, Surrey

Caroline knew when trouble was about to go down - she had developed a good instinct for it over the years - and she guessed it would happen in the showers. Although Prison Rule 28 allowed prisoners one shower a week, she was pleased to have managed three in the first week. On the outside – and it pained her that she had already started to think in prisoner terms – she would shower daily, if not twice a day depending how arduous her day or activities had been. It wasn’t the fact that three other prisoners had skulked into the shower block behind her, but the way the two female prison guards had looked at each other and stepped outside that told her that trouble had finally caught up with her.

Ignoring the three women, she started to undress apparently without care, but she needed her tracksuit bottoms, which she made a show of folding, but was in fact tying the bottoms tightly. She already had four bars of soap, and as she folded her grey sweatshirt, she slipped two bars into each leg of her tracksuit bottoms and shook the bars down to the knotted legs. Stood in just her bra and pants, she faced the three women, who were smirking and sharing looks. There were many lesbians in a female prison, and some women were simply ‘prison gay’ for the attention they would receive. Caroline cut a fine figure in front of them. Medium height, slim with feminine curves, she was an attractive woman even without makeup and her mousy blonde hair tied back in a messy ponytail. There was method in her actions, though. Grappling was easier to do grabbing a person’s clothing, and she had just made a handy mace with her tracksuit bottoms.

“What’s up, girls?” she asked lightly.

“There’s a debt to be paid,” said one of them. She was in the middle and slightly in front of the other two. The leader. The woman was in her early twenties and covered in tattoos, and sporting a crew cut. She didn’t look a stranger to hard drugs, either, with deep-set eyes in black sockets, and needle track marks up both forearms, along with self-harming scars.

“To whom?”

“Whom?” the woman mocked her Home Counties accent. “Get a load of this bitch!” she sneered to the two women’s laughter. “To youm…”

“Now, that’s not really a word, is it…” Caroline smiled. “Anyway, I think you’ve mixed up the possessive order. It’s paid by me, not to me. In any case, that’s irrelevant now because I won’t be paying a damned thing.”

“What?” the woman asked, clearly confused and aware that she was losing the upper hand. She wouldn’t have long in here without the prison guards, so she had to act now.

Caroline was ready when the woman stepped forwards. She swung the tracksuit like a medieval mace above her head, and lunged forwards as she swung at the woman’s face. Both legs and all four bars of soap hit her square on the jaw, and the woman went down hard. Caroline was already charging at the nearest of the woman’s companions and kicked her knee backwards and struck the other woman with the bars of soap on her clavicle. Both women howled and Caroline followed up with a blow each to the head and sent a second opponent to the floor. The last of her attackers held her injured shoulder with tears and fear in her eyes, then suddenly fled out the shower block without looking back.

Caroline looked at her unconscious attackers, then stripped off and showered quickly before quickly drying, untying her tracksuit bottoms and dressing. When she walked out of the shower block, she saw the two guards returning from their impromptu break. They both seemed surprised when they saw her, but Caroline crossed over the gantry and headed back to her cell without taking any notice of them. She had enemies here. But as she asked her attackers in the shower block: whom? Was somebody from MI5 covering their backs? Or was this payback from her last operation? She did not have the answer yet. But she soon would.

Chapter Fifteen

Zürich

Collins had managed to put considerable distance between himself and the scene of the crime, taking deliberate steps to avoid pursuit. He abandoned the police patrol car he had used for his getaway on a quiet street off Guggachstrasse, careful not to draw attention to himself. In an effort to blend in, he had donned one of the deceased officer’s overcoat and hat, keeping his head down as he walked through the streets. To further cover his tracks, Collins utilised multiple forms of transport. He boarded two different trams, took a taxi, and then a bus, each time making subtle changes to his appearance to avoid detection. After leaving the tram for a second time, Collins hailed a taxi. During the drive, he removed the officer’s hat and coat and reversed his jacket. When the taxi dropped him off, Collins continued his evasive tactics by boarding a nearby bus. Each successive change of transport, coupled with his incremental shifts in appearance, made it increasingly unlikely that anyone could track his movements through the city. Before taking the first tram, he removed the hat and raincoat, discarding them. Prior to leaving the second tram, he reversed his own jacket, altering his look yet again. In addition, he rolled up his shirt sleeves and adjusted the collar, making himself less recognisable. Moving through the city, Collins entered three separate shops. In the first, he purchased a new jacket using cash, then acquired a pair of trousers in a different colour at the next location. In the third shop, he exchanged the jacket for a hooded sweatshirt, continuing to evolve his appearance. By the time he disembarked the bus, he had adopted a limp to further disguise himself. Now, seated inconspicuously in a coffee house, Collins made use of the Wi-Fi to attempt the transfer of his funds. Despite his careful planning and efforts to stay ahead of the authorities, the process was not proceeding as he had hoped.

The police had been quick off the mark. It had been expected when two of their own had been killed. The CCTV network in Zürich was first rate, and the investigating officers had soon discovered where their gunman had been prior to the shootout on the street. Collins had thought he’d had a little time at least, but he had needed to put in some fieldcraft to prevent the police following him directly all over the city. Franz Lipperman of the Zimmermann & Strauss Bank had folded where Collins would have expected him to hold strong. What point was a Swiss banker if he didn’t defend his clients’ identity? Two dead police officers, still warm on the street outside, would have been ample leverage for any investigating officer. Collins tried for the third time to transfer his account funds to his British Virgin Islands account, but again the action was denied. He opened the chatbot and after five minutes and four questions discovered that the account had been frozen. The last message told him to contact the bank directly. Collins removed the sim card and switched off the device. He had ordered a black coffee, and it had cooled enough while he had been chasing his funds for him to drain the cup in three gulps. He would not let this lie. Collins had lost the funds, and he knew that there was no changing that. He had researched the Zimmermann & Strauss Bank before entrusting his funds to them, and the thought now made him boil inside. However, part of that research had been researching the manager and key employees of the bank. Franz Lipperman lived in Zollikon, a town just outside the city on the shore of Lake Zürich. Collins checked his watch and smiled. Franz Lipperman would not be home for a few hours, but his wife and two children would be home right around now. Collins pictured the children playing in the garden or seated at the kitchen table working on some homework. His wife Gilda would be making a homecooked meal for dinner. It made for a wholesome, homely scene in Collins’ mind. He had never known a life like that, and in truth was envious at the prospect. It wouldn’t happen for him now. He was far too cold to let somebody into his life, and he doubted he would be good company for a woman. And what kind of role model would he be for a child? No, there would be none of that for him, and nor would there be for Franz Lipperman ever again.

Chapter Sixteen

Swiss towns always felt so artificial to King. He had grown up on the rough streets of South London and had never known such places had existed until he was well into his late-twenties and he had flown into Geneva and done MI6’s bidding. An arms dealer who had played the British government off against its enemies, profiteering from both sides. The arms dealer had failed to deliver and the rebels that Her Majesty’s government had backed had been overthrown and the political imbalance in the Middle East remained to this day. King had sipped a cup of tea opposite the man in a café and stared him in the eyes. The man had already known of King’s reputation in the darkest circles and must have known that his greed had put him on borrowed time. He had returned to his apartment and committed suicide. King’s reputation had become legend and some in MI6 had since referred to him as The Reaper. He simply had to turn up, and the job was as good as done.

That had been a long time ago, and he knew that so much gossip and chatter was bullshit. He had known that the man had late stage-four bowl cancer, and King’s presence had simply clarified the arms dealer’s mind. He was dead anyway, so he at least had a decision in how it ended. King had much preferred this prospect than another messy bullet to the head, and his gambit had worked. King had exfiltrated through the country into Italy, always putting distance between himself and a job – even if he was not directly involved – and had threaded through the Alps in a powerful BMW marvelling at the quaintness, and neatness of the towns and villages. But even a decade and a half later, Swiss towns and villages never felt real to him, always looking like a film set. The centre of Zürich seemed no different. Perhaps it was the spotlessness of the streets, or the fact that unlike neighbouring France, the Swiss painted their buildings every couple of years, and not just once when the building was new. There was none of the abject chaos of Italy, nor the lethargy of France. Pristine and orderly, the vibe was still different from Germany and Austria. King couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he decided that he was not a fan. Life needed balance and counter-balance, and Switzerland seemed just too immovably steady like sailing a flat, calm sea. King didn’t exactly relish sailing through a storm, but the ups and downs of the peaks and troughs and the change in tack made the experience enjoyable. Switzerland was monotonic by contrast.

King rechecked his phone. Ramsay had lost Collins. King knew the man was a ghost. That was what made him so damned formidable. Working with him, King knew the man’s strengths and weaknesses, and it pissed him off somewhat when he conceded that his shortcomings were few. Few that made him vulnerable, at least. But unlike King, who had never enjoyed or relished killing, Collins lived for it. King suspected that the man would have enjoyed killing small animals as a child. Collins had certainly found great pleasure in his work. MI6 had set firm boundaries in its deniable programmes and children were off-limits. Families and innocent bystanders were not to be considered ‘collateral damage’. It would have been easy to simply slip an explosive device under an IRA member’s vehicle, but MI6 had strict rules of engagement. A bullet was surgical. It just needed men like King to pull the trigger. Collins had broken these rules in Rwanda. His previous and subsequent work as a mercenary had been barbaric. Collins didn’t just consider collateral damage a viable consequence of his work, he actively sought it out. It was this bloodlust that had seen him discharged from the Australian military. Had the incident not been so easy to hush-up – and in the Australian SAS’s best interest - then he would have had a court martialled and given a custodial sentence. As it was, he was quietly fired and deported. King thought about the man’s dark quirk, his lust for killing and wondered how or if he could use it against him.

The text chimed and King opened it eagerly. He hated inaction, hated being on the periphery. As he suspected, Ramsay may not have had information on Collins, but he had something on the man who had tried to kill him. The man had changed his appearance, used good fieldcraft drills to get clear of the police in the city, but he was not as skilled as Collins. Ramsay had an address. A small hotel in the south of the city. Approaching him would be dangerous. Foolhardy, even. But he had an idea, and it might just work.

Chapter Seventeen

Windsor, England

“Nice digs…”

“They’re adequate. And the commute is somewhat less demanding than in London, now that I have relocated.”

“Still have Jim as your driver and minder?”

“Naturally.”

“And I see that Mae is your PA…” Luger paused. “I thought she might retire after we were all cut loose.”

“Never,” Ramsay said without looking up from his laptop.

“What about King?”

Ramsay finally looked up and said, “That’s why you’re here.”

“He’s working for you? For this new department? It’s only been just over a week.”

“No,” Ramsay replied. “He went after Richard Collins.”

“But he’s dead, isn’t he?” Luger frowned. “Took a bullet and went into the Thames. Flymo saw it, too. He couldn’t have made it out.”

“Well, he did.” Ramsay swivelled the laptop for Luger to see. He played a series of clips from the shooting outside the Zimmermann & Strauss Bank to various modes of public transport. Each time Collins came into view he had changed his appearance. “That last clip is when the Swiss police lost him,” he said wearily.

Luger nodded. “And Caroline?”

“Nothing has changed. She’s on remand and the service have not stepped forward to protect her, yet. She’s being used as a pawn, but to what end, I do not yet know.”

Luger nodded. “I must say, I’m surprised by King’s priorities.”

“I’m not. If Collins remains at large, then King will not be safe. He can’t very well help Caroline if he’s dead, can he?”

Luger shrugged. “I suppose not.” He didn’t like to admit it, but Ramsay was right. He had not always seen eye-to-eye with King, and he had found himself increasingly attracted to Caroline which didn’t help matters. He had wanted to visit her but felt it would be misconstrued. He looked past Ramsay at the splendour of Windsor Castle in the distance. “How is it working out here?” Asked to join after his employment termination with MI5, Luger had declined to take some time to reflect. He was in a new relationship and was still affected by the death of his aunt - his true mother figure – and had felt the remit of the department as highly dubious. He was here for Ramsay and nobody else. He had to admit, a week of kicking his heels, walking his dog and ‘Netflix and chill’ evenings with Lillia Bailey - an aviation crash investigator with whom he had been having a tentative relationship since working with her on a case - and he was yearning for a new challenge.

Since being removed from service, his unit shut down by the Prime Minister himself, Ramsay had immediately taken up the role in an intelligence department run by the crown. Unaffected by political influence, ‘The Department’ was apparently established over a century ago alongside MI5 and MI6 under Vernon Kell and Mansfield Cummings.

“I’m feeling things out,” Neil Ramsay replied. Jim Kernow swept his office for listening devices and hidden cameras daily, so he felt free to talk. “I was with the Security Service for fifteen years and never once heard mention of The Department. That tells me two things. One, that they are exceptional at what they do…”

“And two?”

“That they have a great deal to lose if people discover their existence. I want to know more. I want to see whether they are a viable establishment in our society.” Ramsay paused somewhat thoughtfully. “Free from political oversight, and therefore held to account every five years by democratic process, is the country better off with The Department’s existence, or should it be torn down like a rotten building with concrete cancer? Well, I haven’t decided yet.”

Luger looked at the unassuming man confined to a wheelchair by an assassin’s bullet. The same shooting that claimed the life of his aunt, Stella Fox, previous head of MI5. A strange man with a gift for technology and data, his team had been convinced of his autism because it made him as quirky as it did a genius. And here he was deputy director of The Department – an organisation so secret that not even MI5 or MI6 had heard of it, and he was willing to judge it from the inside and bring it down if it interfered with democracy. “I’m here if you need me, Neil,” Luger said sincerely.

“And you are very much needed, Jack,” Ramsay replied. “I want you to shadow King. The sooner he takes Richard Collins out of the equation, then the sooner we can concentrate on getting Caroline out of prison and move forward. Together. As a team.”

Luger nodded. “King will know I’m following him.”

“Then see that he doesn’t.” Ramsay paused. “And if he does, then see that he accepts your help.”

“I think it’s a personal thing,” Luger said. “King strikes me as that type of bloke.”

“I do not care about such trivial things. Collins carried out a terrorist attack on the city and is responsible for more than a hundred deaths, hundreds of life-changing injuries and trauma, and untold material and financial damage to the city. You either capture him for trial, or you help King kill him. I don’t much care which.”

Chapter Eighteen

HM Prison Bronzefield, Surrey

Time was all there was in prison. The time you served, the time you were robbed of outside, and the time ahead of you. You left your cell for three meals a day and a shower once a week, perhaps more if you were lucky, or if somebody had paid the guards to look the other way and organise a beat-down. There was an hour of exercise time in the courtyard and a rota to use the gymnasium. Caroline knew that she did not fit in, and was grateful for that, but it did not make her integration into prison life easy. Not that she wanted to integrate anyway, but she did want to be left alone. She kept her back to the wall, used her peripheral vision as a driver used their mirrors in heavy traffic, and she remained in a state of constant readiness, which had left her feeling exhausted. The food was stodgy, rich in carbohydrates, low in flavour and high in empty calories. She had discovered that she could buy tinned tuna, sweetcorn, and fruit salad and have the lid removed in the canteen before returning to her cell, which at least gave her some control in what she ate. She had flattened and folded two of the cans using the corner of her metal bedstead to press them flat after each fold and fashioned two spearheads. She had then dissolved chewing gum in boiling water from her kettle and soaked toilet paper in the solution before wrapping it around the bottom half of each spearhead, then she had left them to dry to form handles that were both easy to grip and would protect her hands from the sharp metal. Using the exposed stone in the outside wall, she had sharpened the tips even further. She now kept one in each pocket.

It had surprised her greatly that she had been permitted a kettle, sugar, teabags and a carton of UHT milk. She supposed it made the prisoners less demanding, but the risk of ‘prison napalm’ kept her on edge. Prisoners with a grudge had been known to boil sugar and water in their kettles and burst into the cell of their intended victim and shower them in the face with the boiling liquid. Caroline knew the effectiveness of this – she had once used boiled sugar syrup on a woman when she had been unarmed against armed attackers – and she had witnessed first-hand the appalling devastation it could do.

Caroline had been left alone since the incident in the shower block, but it was only a matter of time before it happened again. Somebody had paid, bribed or coerced the three women to attack her and it would not be long before that same person tried again. It was clear, though, that the two prison guards who had looked the other way were in the loop, and Caroline had concluded that the three women had merely been stooges. Whoever had ordered the attack had done so through either one or both of those guards. Caroline had phoned her suspicion through to Verity Harding using the payphone. Under Rule 39, any phone calls to her legal representation was exempt from prison monitoring and recording. She had asked Verity to pass on her concerns to Big Dave. Quite what he would do with the information, she did not know, but she knew that he would indeed do something, and that was good enough for her.

Chapter Nineteen

Brixton

The estate was comprised of four blocks of flats, eight storeys high and twenty dwellings wide. Drab, grey and utterly depressing. The concrete had never been painted, and Big Dave could not work out whether it had been to save money or simply forgotten. These were a mix of council properties and privately owned and would have to be among the cheapest properties on London’s real estate market. Not that many of the residents would have owned their homes, these were landlord and tenant affairs where the damp and mould overran the walls and the maintenance men rarely showed, though were often called. Outside, there were a few vehicles parked in residents’ parking bays, as well as the ubiquitous car jacked up on bricks with the wheels removed, and threading through the vehicles, lamp posts and over the patches of dead grass, a stream of children on BMX bikes and electric scooters patrolled, always on the lookout for the police. These were not just harmless kids at play, many of them were lookouts for the drug dealers in the shadows, or ferried money from the punters to the dealers, returning with baggies of everything from cannabis to crack.

Big Dave watched from his van and could not help feeling that his life growing up in Fiji may not have been rich with money and possessions, but it was a good childhood and a world away from the depressing scene unfolding in front of him.

Since being cut loose from MI5, he did not have the use of a company vehicle and had purchased the van on a whim from an old army friend. The former soldier had swapped out the engine for that of an old Porsche 911 that he had also owned, and that had been written off after an accident and bought back off the insurance company. The rear-engined van now had an extra 150 bhp and made for an interesting drive. Currently of no fixed abode, Big Dave was now sleeping in the rear of the van and until Caroline’s call he had planned on driving down to Devon and Cornwall to rekindle his love of water sports. He was shelving that plan for now, and it felt good to be useful again.

Big Dave got out of the van and was immediately met by two teens on bikes.

“What you doin’ er, blud…”

Big Dave took out his wallet and thumbed out a twenty-pound note, holding it out for the two boys to look at. “Parking,” he replied. “There’s another one of those for you if nobody messes with my whip…”

“Right, mister,” one of the boys said, holding out his hand.

“Another twenty…” Big Dave replied, then moved his jacket just enough for the boys to see the butt of his pistol underneath. “And a world of hurt for you both if there’s so much as a mark on it when I get back…”

“I hear you, fam…” the youth replied, holding out his hand, then snatching the banknote from him.

Big Dave left the two boys to it. There wasn’t much else he could do if they took his money and ran, but he suspected they would want another twenty pounds for simply hanging around and warning off their mates. He took the weed-strewn path and climbed the steps, which smelled of urine and cigarette butts. There were decent working people here, but poverty leeched into their lives like an infection. Working and paying the rent with little chance of attaining more in life must have been hell - ambitions stunted before they could be truly realised. The opportunities here were as hopeless as those in his native Fiji, but at least he had had the backdrop of paradise.

Sarah McKinney lived in the Jubilee building in Flat 134 on the seventh floor. The lifts were out of order, and it was quite a climb, but he wouldn’t have wanted to take the lift anyway. He stepped aside for a couple of teenage boys who stared at him like they wouldn’t have thought twice about killing him, completely unintimidated by his size. He supposed they were carrying knives and that buoyed a person’s confidence - and that was the root cause of knife crime.

On the sixth floor, he stepped aside for a man hurrying down the stairs two at a time. He was sweating profusely and nursing a bruised eye and bloodied lip. Maybe he’d had a run-in with the two chavs who had been heading downstairs. The man looked Persian to Big Dave and had worn a gold chain with a moon and star pendant. He had seen the symbol before in Afghanistan, Morocco and the Middle East. A symbol of Islam. He assumed that it was just another racially motivated attack in a community that simmered with tensions below the surface. He kept climbing and stopped on the seventh floor, counting down the doors as he went because very few had numbers. It must have been a nightmare for the postman.

The door to Flat 134 was ajar, and as soon as he saw the splintered doorframe, he drew the pistol and stepped cautiously inside. He already knew what he was going to find. If not the scenario, then at least the outcome. But he wasn’t expecting what he saw next. The balcony window was open, the curtain wafting in the breeze. Sarah McKinney did not make a good living as a prison guard, but she had furnished her home well, which was immaculately clean and well-coordinated. Big Dave stepped onto the balcony and looked down on Sarah McKinney’s body. She was face-up, her legs twisted underneath her, and her arms outstretched. There was a pool of blood around her head, and it was spreading further from her body by the second. A woman was kneeling beside her, and a man was on his phone, talking animatedly. Even the chavs had stopped cycling and scooting around the estate to gawp at a body close-up and were taking pictures with their phones. Everyone seemed to look up in unison and stare at Big Dave on the balcony. When he dipped back out of view, he knew that everybody would think him guilty, and he hurriedly left. Sarah McKinney would have been in the air when Big Dave was over halfway up the stairs. It had to be the two youths or the Muslim man in a hurry. He bolted down the stairs two at a time and was halfway to his van when he stopped in his tracks. The man had bruises forming around his eye and a split lip. Could it have been possible that Sarah McKinney had put up a fight in her last moments? He jogged around the edge of the building, where more people had gathered around the body. Big Dave didn’t waste any time, and he pushed his way through the crowd and squatted on his haunches beside the body. He turned over her left hand, and then her right. There was a cut on her knuckle consistent with a punch, and even in the short time since striking her attacker and falling to her death, her knuckle had bruised. He stood up, ignoring the protests and accusations, and returned to his van.

Chapter Twenty

Slough

He had missed Liz Searle at the end of her shift at HM Prison Bronzefield. Unlike Sarah McKinney who lived further away in London and commuted on the train and bus daily, Liz Searle drove to work each day in her little red Vauxhall Corsa. The traffic was light, and Big Dave had caught her up at a series of staggered roundabouts. The van was nondescript in the traffic, and he was able to hang back a few car lengths and settle into tailing her home. He had already used Google Earth to scope out her home address and could see that she lived at a nicer home than her colleague. Probably because she was married and had a dual income and was more senior to Sarah McKinney, having six years on her service.

Big Dave glanced in his rear-view mirror, confirming there was no one tailing him or acting suspiciously behind. Satisfied that he was not being followed, he refocused his attention ahead. Liz Searle, driving her small red Vauxhall Corsa, continued along the road, amidst the regular flow of traffic. Cars ahead turned off at various junctions or merged into the main road, and others pulled out in front of her, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The scene was typical of everyday drivers going about their routines, with no indication of imminent trouble.

Losing Sarah McKinney had changed the game. Caroline had given her barrister the names of the two guards who had ignored her potential beating or killing and had passed the names on to Big Dave. Whoever paid for them to look the other way and organise the prisoners to attack Caroline was the link in the chain shackling her from freedom. Right now, Sarah McKinney was out of the equation and Liz Searle was the only lead they had.

Big Dave glanced at his watch. He had two hours before he had to be back at The Old Bailey, where Verity Harding was making her closing statement for a high-profile murder case. He had deemed her safe in the highest court in the land, but if he was going to protect her, then he would have to be there when she finished for the day. He glanced back at the road, but a fraction too late to act. The tiny red Vauxhall was T-boned by an old sign-written Ford Transit and the vehicle behind her cannoned into the rear as a motorcycle pulled up alongside. A man climbed out of the Transit and aimed a pistol at the driver’s window of the Vauxhall. Big Dave stamped on the brakes and drew his Glock 17 pistol as the gunshots echoed around the street. There were screams and shouts from panicked pedestrians and the gunman was already in front of the Vauxhall and getting onto the rear pillion of the motorcycle. Big Dave opened fire through the windscreen of his van, punching clean holes through the glass, the cabin filling with the smell of nitro-powder and hot brass. His ears rang and whined as he fired a dozen shots and the gunman slid off the motorcycle and lay still in the road. The motorcycle sped away, but started to wobble and veered across the road, slamming into a parked car and the rider slumping over the wreckage.

The big Fijian clambered out of his van and kept his weapon trained on the nearest body but could already tell that the man was dead. It wasn’t looking good for the motorcycle rider either, but it was looking a hell of a lot worse for Liz Searle, who was slumped over the steering wheel of her car with half her head missing, and the horn blaring loudly. Big Dave walked around the bonnet, reached inside and pushed the body back into the seat, the noise of the car horn extinguishing immediately. He switched off the ignition, killing the engine noise, which was soon replaced by the sound of approaching police vehicles running blues and twos. He looked back at his van, the windscreen blown out and blocked in by the crash and vehicles behind and tucked the pistol away under his jacket and took out his mobile phone and dialled. The first police vehicle on the scene was a black Volvo SUV with blue lights strobing through the front grille. The two officers exited, both armed with Heckler & Koch G36 carbines with Glock 17 pistols and tasers holstered amongst handcuffs, pepper spray and batons. These were heavy-duty armed response officers, and even to the former SAS trooper, they looked like they meant business.

“Neil,” he said when Ramsay picked up. “I’m in the shit…”

Chapter Twenty-One

The Old Bailey, London

Verity Harding had made her closing speech; the judge had called session for the day and now it was up to the jury. Session was called for tomorrow morning and even then, they were all in the hands of the jury until a verdict had been concluded. The prosecution had been laden with errors, the DNA evidence was refutable, and the Crown Prosecution Service should never have brough the case to trial. As cases went, she was ninety percent sure that her client would walk, and rightly so.

While doing little for one’s figure and appearing faintly ridiculous to the casual observer, she would have to admit that the wig and gown gave one an incredible self-esteem. She had worked hard to get where she was and there had been no financial help through university from her parents like so many of her peers. She had studied hard, partied occasionally and worked two jobs alongside studying for her degree. She was now at the top of her game, the peak of her career. So, why the hell was she taking a case that not only sent her head-to-head against the establishment, but had left her in fear of her life? Her only reasoning was that it was because of this very reason. She did not like to be threatened, and she could not suffer the injustice of it. She had become a defence barrister because she had seen the bullying tactics of the establishment. Falsified police evidence, altered statements, unreliable witnesses, out of court settlements – it only fuelled her to fight injustices. Of course, this was an incredibly small percentage of cases, but it had been early enough in her career to influence her. Caroline Darby had been hung out to dry by the Security Service because of direct political influence and that simply would not stand. She despised flip-flop politicians, much less a serving Prime Minister who backtracked on policy when the going got tough. The fight against terrorism wasn’t like fudging the books, U-turning on taxes, or employer’s national insurance contributions or winter fuel allowances - it was fundamental to the nation’s security. Caroline Darby had merely been doing her job. Her military service record was exemplary. Much of her service record with MI5 had been redacted, which spoke volumes as to the nature of her work with the nation’s spy and terrorist hunters.

“Ms Harding…”

Verity broke her stride and studied the man who had silently approached her. He was of average height and stocky, carrying a little extra weight around his middle but she supposed that went with his age, which she put at over fifty and under sixty. The sort of man who still played rugby until a few years ago when he had to finally give it up when his knees wouldn’t stop complaining. She decided that his weathered face was trustworthy, but she looked around for her giant protector nonetheless and felt uneasy when he was not where he said he would be. “Yes…?”

“I’m Jim Kernow,” he said.

She frowned. “Caroline’s arresting officer? You are on my witness list and are compromising Caroline’s case by talking to me informally…”

“Sorry,” he said. “I only arrested her because I could control where she was taken and what she was charged with.”

“Murder?”

“Commander Bridger was with Special Branch and if he charged her with terrorism related offenses, then he would have had two-weeks to question her, rather than twenty-four hours.” He paused. “And I said all along that in my opinion it was nothing more than suicide by cop. I did not expect her to be charged and locked up until trial.”

“We’ll get to the suicide by cop thing later. But, please, why are you here?”

“I’m here to escort you back to your home,” he replied, then added, “Big Dave sends his apologies, but he has run into some problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Well, put it this way… do you offer a discount? Something like two for the price of one…”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Windsor, England

There was a loud knock at the door - a crisp, double-tap rhythm that spoke plainly of the man responsible. It was direct, business-like, devoid of any unnecessary ceremony or pretence. Ramsay recognised and appreciated this courtesy; it stood in stark contrast to the behaviour of others he had served under. In his experience, some superiors were all too eager to assert their authority, taking pleasure in the small demonstrations of power their roles allowed. The director, however, was not cut from that cloth, and Ramsay found himself quietly grateful for it.

Ramsay looked up as Arthur Wilber-Scott entered. As usual he was attired in his dark navy pinstripe suit tailored on Savile Row. Wilber-Scott wasn’t the first man that Ramsay worked for whose suit cost more than he made in two months, and he doubted he would be the last. Wilber-Scott regarded Ramsay in the way he always did, hawk-like eyes set close together, intense and questioning. There was great intelligence behind those alert eyes, and Ramsay had decided early that he would never underestimate him. The man’s hair was immaculately combed and greying at the sides. Ramsay could only guess at the man’s age – which he put at forty - for try as he might, he could find nothing about the man and suspected that his name was nothing more than pure fiction.

“How goes it, Neil?”

“Fine, Sir,” Ramsay replied.

“Well, that’s troubling. Things don’t usually go fine around here,” Wilber-Scott commented flatly. “And please, call me Arty. I don’t want to have to keep asking you…”

“Noted.”

“Still trying to work it all out, eh?”

“I suppose so.”

The director smiled. “When I first met you and your gang or reprobates, I told you that nobody should know Superman’s identity. Or Batman, for that matter. We want our work to be put down to happenstance or at least funnelled to the intelligence services so they can think that they had the idea.” He paused, doing his best to suppress a smile and failing. Ramsay was surprised because smugness had not been in the man’s nature until now, but he knew full well what was coming. “You’d be surprised how many snippets of information we leaked to you and your opposite numbers over at the River House.”

“Care to enlighten me?”

“Certainly not!” he retorted. “Well, perhaps some missing gold in recent years, but you seemed to be holding your own with your special department. It’s a shame the PM shut you down…”

“Indeed.”

There was a brief but gentle knock on the door and Mae appeared balancing a tray with one hand. Ramsay had brought his former PA over with him, and he was glad if not for her efficiency, then for the familiarity and her dogged loyalty. As was her manner she placed the drinks down without interruption and left the room. If Ramsay wanted something else, then he could ask her. That was the way he liked it, and since his life-changing accident or ‘the incident’ as he referred to it, he did not like to be overly fussed over or mothered.

“I took the liberty of asking Mae for beverages. Tea for you, was that right?”

“Thank you.”

“The government is floundering,” he said after taking a sip from his cup of tea.

Ramsay nodded. “It seems to be a trend. All post millennium governments have floundered, but it is the duty of the British voter to change that at the polling station.”

“Absolutely.”

“Barring a snap election, which wouldn’t seem likely, they have another four years to change the voters’ minds.”

“That’s an awfully long time. The country could be ruined by then.”

“The last government almost did the same thing, and the one before that.” Ramsay paused. “It is, and always should be, the duty and right of the voter to make the change.”

Wilber-Scott chuckled before taking another sip of his tea. He placed the cup back down on the saucer. Ramsay disliked the fussy pattern of the bone china, but Wilber-Scott had told him that it had come from Windsor Castle. If it could survive the devastating fire, then it would be staying. “Nothing like that, old boy. We do not interfere in politics. I’ve already made that clear, and you must trust me on that point. However, four years is a long time and whomever takes the helm after the next election, should the government make it to the full term, needs to inherit some stability and viable options.”

“Such as?”

“Britain has just signed a deal for the NHS using a Swiss pharmaceutical company.”

“By Britain, you mean the department of health.”

“Instructed by the cabinet,” said Wilber-Scott. “Which means, the Prime Minister, basically.”

“AJB Suisse. Based near Bern. They are the leading field in cancer treatment drugs and flu and coronavirus vaccines.” Ramsay paused. “I do watch the news…”

“And not just vaccines,” Wilber-Scott replied. “The miracle weight-loss jabs that will save the NHS hundreds of millions in the next two decades, plasma, saline, cultured dressings derived from seaweed, painkillers, anti-inflammatory drugs, contraception pills, implants and jabs… AJB Suisse can undercut almost every pharmaceutical company out there.”

“Which in itself is suspicious,” Ramsay said pointedly. “Many of these products are manufactured under licence in the third world and developing world, so there is no reason why multinationals like Johnson and Johnson or Pfizer can’t match a smaller Swiss outfit.”

“Exactly. AJB Suisse are operating at a significant loss. I have my sources, and they have rarely been anything but correct, who inform me that AJB Suisse has plans to merge with Merrick & Webb, the USA’s fastest growing pharmaceutical company. Once completed, Merrick & Webb will absorb the losses of the Swiss company and will take charge of their operations. Prices will be hiked, and the NHS will likely collapse as a result. The only way that the NHS will survive will be to have Merrick & Webb’s money and products.”

“And the American President is major shareholder in Merrick & Webb…” said Ramsay pointedly.

Wilber-Scott nodded. “As are his cronies in office with him. I mean, the President has been on record calling it AJB Susie instead of pronouncing it as Swiss, but even as stupid as he sounds, he will effectively own the NHS because he will dictate where the health service purchases their products, and with whom. The NHS will have no option but to purchase from Merrick & Webb, and other US pharmaceutical companies that the administration have their grubby little fingers in.” He paused. “It’s rather like those public houses that struggle to make a profit, but then you hear that they are leased to the tenants by the brewery and are legally obligated to buy their beer and wine and spirits from the brewery who have a two-factor business model. Landlords and suppliers. Before you know it, the poor landlord at The Merry Goat Inn can’t make a profit.”

“America are our oldest and strongest allies, but it is becoming ever more difficult to navigate our relationship. The lines are increasingly blurred.”

“Business and politics go hand in hand these days, I’m afraid.”

“So, it’s a conflict of interest, but I don’t imagine anybody over there will listen or be heard.” Ramsay looked thoughtful for a moment then said, “Pricing will have been factored into the deal with AJB Suisse, surely? If the prices change, then there will be no requirement to honour the terms of the contract.”

Wilber-Scott smirked. “Well, this government were so keen to get the supply of cancer drugs and vaccines and all the lovely magical sweeties on offer, that they neglected to cover that base. Didn’t do their due diligence. Rather like the fools who negotiated the so-called Brexit deal.” He paused. “We got shafted then, so I’m not taking any chances this time round.”

“You?”

“My advisors…”

“Who are?”

Wilber-Scott smiled. “The Department, old boy.”

Ramsay nodded sagely. He wasn’t getting much out of Arthur Wilber-Scott, but that didn’t mean that he would stop pushing. “So, what do you suggest?”

“The deal will not only be devastating to the public’s finances, but it will be catastrophic to national pride, its one true thing. The NHS is a boat full of holes, but at least we are bailing it out. This deal will sink it. Right to the freezing depths. Not only will we lose control over it and its buying power, but we will never get it back. The NHS will simply become an American business with a captive market. Our health service will cease to exist and people without health insurance will sink into health poverty, and private practice will be the norm.” He paused, shaking his head despairingly. “I don’t know why we expect politicians to be good at business. They barely know the price of a pint of milk and loaf of sliced white.”

“I we can agree that it will not be good for the country,” said Ramsay. He didn’t need the hard sell, and he did not hide his impatience. He liked to get to the point, but it was a learning curve for both men.

“Exactly.”

“And even if we could change the paperwork of the deal, factor in a price freeze that aligned with the interests of the NHS, the deal would still be unacceptable?”

“Completely.”

“Then AJB Suisse needs to cease to exist before the deal is completed and before any merger with Merrick & Webb.” He paused. “It sounds as if they are trading as a shell and will dissolve immediately after the merger, so I suppose we can try to speed up the process.”

“I knew you’d see the big picture, Neil.”

“AJB Suisse is more than a series of buildings. It’s the databases, the management, the assets and accounts.”

“Now you’re talking my language.”

“Consider it done.”

“That easy?” Wilber-Scott raised an eyebrow as he grinned. “It will be a damned sight trickier than that…”

“Not if one has the right team.”

“Thin on the ground, old boy. I can’t really help you there. Besides, you still have your merry band of reprobates to call on…”

“Speaking of which…” Ramsay paused. “An incident occurred this afternoon.”

“Oh?”

“A shooting…”

“In Slough?”

“Yes.”

“Violent times, I’m afraid.”

“Indeed. However, it’s not as cut and dry as it might sound. One of my former reprobates, as you say, was working on something when he took drastic action having witnessed a murder.”

“Hmm,” Wilber-Scott murmured. “A bit tricky, that one. Your reprobate was armed. That’s five years in the brink, so I gather. That’s before he shot two men in the back…”

“So, you know who I’m talking about,” Ramsay stated flatly.

“One hears things…”

“He’s a good man,” Ramsay persisted. “He thought he wanted a change of scene when you made your offer. I imagine working for The Department would be an acceptable change of scene now that he’s in a police cell.”

“Consider it done.”

“That easy?” Ramsay raised an eyebrow as he grinned as he mirrored both Wilber-Scott’s previous words and expression. “It will be a damned sight trickier than that…”

“It’s not called the Crown Prosecution Service for nothing…”

“If influence over the Crown Prosecution Service is so easy, then why is my agent still languishing in prison?” Ramsay asked tersely. “She should not be standing trial for what she did. She was forced into using her weapon in the line of duty.”

“You’re a chess player, right Neil?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good. Well, as a chess player you will realise that there is a gambit to play here. Outside influence has put Caroline Darby where she is, and until we discover who exactly that outside influence is and what their reasoning is, we cannot risk moving her. The longer she is an issue to certain influences, the sooner we will see them make their move.”

“But you’re risking her life!” Ramsay protested vehemently.

“She is an ex-soldier and a trained Security Service officer. In other words, she’s a big girl and look after herself.”

“That’s a hell of a risk,” Ramsay persisted.

“She is a piece on the board, Neil. A useful piece. No, more than that. She is a vital piece, if we are to win this game.” Wilber-Scott finished his tea and stood up, casually adjusting the fall of his suit jacket. “Now, if only you had an asset already in Switzerland. That would be jolly handy, would it not?”

Ramsay remained silent as he watched Wilber-Scott leave the office, closing the door quietly behind him. The sense of unease lingered, as Ramsay considered just how much Wilber-Scott appeared to know about every aspect of the situation. The depth of his intelligence was disconcerting; it left Ramsay feeling exposed and uncertain. Despite this, the reality was that Ramsay now possessed not just one, but two valuable assets in Switzerland. The immediate challenge, however, was determining the most effective way to deploy them. The complexity of the situation required careful thought; each asset could tip the balance, but only if used judiciously.

With Wilber-Scott gone, Ramsay was left alone to contemplate his next move, aware that the decisions he made now could have far-reaching consequences. The chess game was well under way, and Ramsay needed to ensure each piece was played to maximum effect.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Zollikon, Switzerland

The still waters of the lake glistened under the glare of the sun as he parked and switched off the engine. The lake’s mirror-smooth surface reflected the town’s clocktower with a crystalline clarity. Luger stepped out of the hired Audi, pausing for a moment to take in the view. He studied the hill rising beyond the cluster of old buildings, marvelling at the flawless reflection shimmering across the water. The lake was so clear that, as he gazed further along its length, it became difficult to distinguish where the water ended and the sky began, the two merging seamlessly in the brilliance of the midday sun.

Jack Luger had his orders, but he interpreted them loosely. He had been told to find King and watch his back. That was easier said than done. However, if he found Richard Collins, then he could work backwards from there. Capture or kill – Ramsay had said that it meant no difference to him – and if Collins wanted King dead, then sooner or later their paths would cross, and Luger would be able to act upon his orders. He couldn’t see anything wrong in his logic, but he did feel trepidation at going after a trained assassin with Collins’ dubious history. Luger had been forced to kill in the line of duty, but he would be the first to admit that he did not have the training – or possibly the mindset – to walk in the man’s shoes. He did, however, have genius level intelligence and steely resolve. King had started training him in unarmed combat techniques, and he had put in a great deal of time on the pistol range with both SAS and combined intelligence services instructors. He knew that he was twice the man who had first pulled the trigger on gunman in Turkey in what seemed a lifetime ago.

The property he wanted was easy to spot because it had half of Switzerland’s police vehicles outside, as well as an ambulance and a shiny, black coroner’s ambulance. The dead always seemed to prefer a Mercedes van in freshly polished black paint. Luger supposed it was the least they deserved. Outside the cordon, four uniformed police officers guarded the crime scene a few members of the press waited with cameras for the macabre sight to present a photograph opportunity. Luger took in the scene. The beauty of the sun-kissed lake on one side, and the cold finality of death on the other. He walked up to the nearest police officer and said, “Jack Luger, with Interpol. Detective Gabriel has agreed to see me…”

The officer regarded him suspiciously for an uncomfortable moment, then reached for his radio and called an officer inside the house. There was a crackle, and something muttered on the other end and after a full minute, an answer came back over the net. The officer lifted the cordon of yellow crime scene tape and said, “Coveralls, over socks and facemasks are outside…”

Luger nodded and ducked under the tape. A folding table had been set up outside the house with stacks of protective equipment, and he donned the protective clothing hoping that he looked like he knew what he was doing to the police officers observing him from the street, then sighed a clipboard that he assumed had been left outside for that reason. He glanced at his watch before adding the time of entry. Inside the house it was obvious where he should head because of the voices emanating from the kitchen. He had not seen death up close during his naval service. He had witnessed it from monitors on the bridge and from recordings from which he had analysed the data. He had sent missiles into Britain’s enemy at the flick of a switch, and he had commanded pilots when to engage. Since joining MI5, he had met death. Up close and personal. He had felt its cold hand upon his shoulder, and he had seen it in his dreams. But nothing had prepared him for this.

One of the murder investigation team approached and removed his facemask. “I am Detective Gabriel, senior investigator with the Kantonspolizei, we spoke on the phone…”

“Jack Luger, Interpol,” he replied, showing his forged identification card – one of many that Ramsay had furnished him with in his new role as Deputy Director of The Department. It would have been easy for the detective to check, but Ramsay had protocols in place that would ‘guide’ the detective’s call to where it could be handled effectively.

“I fail to see how we can help, and how visiting the crime scene will aid your investigation.”

“I’m hunting the man who did this,” Luger replied. “It pays to get a full insight into the person you’re hunting.”

The detective regarded him somewhat dubiously. “Well, this will certainly give you an insight. It looks like a murder suicide.” He paused. “But I will walk you through the crime scene…” He turned on his heel and led the way to the nearest body. It was all of two metres from the doorway, as if Luger needed help in spotting it. “This was the boy, although you’d never tell from the face. No obvious sexual assault or mutilation, but we will no more when the body is on the mortuary slab…”

Luger stared at the body of the boy. He knew from his research that the boy had been just nine years of age. There was no face left, very little that Luger could recognise as being the boy’s skull. Beside the body was a skillet pan, the type of cast iron frying pan with ridges in it to burn sear marks into a steak. It was covered in blood, hair and bone. He could feel bile rise in his throat, but he grimaced as he swallowed it back down to save face.

Gabriel looked at him and asked, “Are you okay, Mister Luger?”

Luger shrugged. “I’ll never be okay seeing this…”

The detective shrugged. “The daughter was stabbed repeatedly,” he said, turning his back on him and pointing to where the twelve-year-old girl lay face down on the blood-stained floor. “Over a hundred times would be my initial guess. Again, the medical examiner will know more.”

“And Gilda Lipperman?”

“There’s evidence of sexual torture,” Gabriel replied matter-of-factly.

“Rape?”

The Swiss detective shook his head. “We don’t think so. However, she has been cut up very badly. Mutilation of the breasts and genitals.”

Luger frowned. “You said, murder-suicide…”

“Franz Lipperman is upstairs in the bathroom.”

“You think he did this?”

“Of course!” Gabriel said acidly. “You don’t?”

“No.”

“Why? What information or evidence do you have to the contrary?”

Luger headed out to the hallway and started for the stairs forcing the detective to follow. There was blood on the stairs, wall and bannisters. He followed the tracks of bloody footprints into a large bathroom with a lavatory and bidet and a roll top free-standing bath next to a separate shower cubicle. It was unusual for Swiss to have a bath, but Franz Lipperman’s body was in the water, which was bright crimson and had overflowed. Both the man’s wrists were cut deeply, and a sharp-looking kitchen knife was lying on the floor. “Franz Lipperman cooperated with the police in a shooting outside the Zimmermann & Strauss Bank in Zürich. Soon afterwards the bank froze the assets of the man I’m investigating.”

“Investigating?”

Luger shrugged. “Hunting.”

“And you think he did this?”

“I do. It fits his MO.” Luger paused. “And if you look at the depth of the cuts on the man’s wrists, then there’s no way he would have yielded that knife for the second cut. The tendons in both wrists have been severed. One cut, certainly. The second cut? Not a chance. Your pathologist will likely come to the same conclusion.” Luger paused. “I think he tried to access his accounts, and when he found that they had been frozen, I think he took exception to the bank’s cooperation with the police. That’s not what Swiss banking is meant to be about. I think he slaughtered Franz Lipperman’s family and waited for the man to come home. When he did, I think he relished seeing the man destroyed. He then took him upstairs and made his death look like suicide.”

“Or perhaps this man of yours tried to gain access to his accounts by torturing the man’s family in front of him…” Gabriel shook his head and stared blankly at Luger, before eventually saying, “Who the hell is this man?”

“A mercenary,” Luger replied, leaving out the part where the Secret Intelligence Service finely honed him through specialist training and used his services for years. “Richard Collins, born in Zimbabwe, lived in South Africa, England and Australia. He was a member of the Australian Special Air Service… their special forces. He served in Afghanistan, then worked as a mercenary in Africa and the Middle East.”

The Swiss detective stared at Franz Lipperman’s body and without looking at Luger, said, “Rather you than me, my friend. He certainly does not sound like the kind of man I want to search for, much less find…”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Kensington, London

Big Dave stepped out of the taxi fifty metres short of Verity Harding’s building. He was a big man, and he stood out like a sore thumb in the quiet street, and the Range Rover roared off before he could approach the driver’s door. MI5 were still playing silly buggers. Had he been driving his van then he could have boxed them in, and they could have all had an awkward but enlightening conversation.

His van had been towed to a police compound and could only be transported by an approved breakdown service to a garage for repairs. The police liked to put all kinds of barriers up when they had your vehicle. Big Dave had asked for a windscreen repair service to deal with the replacement windscreen, but the police would not permit entry to a third party. He had got the feeling that they had not wanted to release him and were more than a little miffed that the Crown Prosecution Service had decided not to prosecute him. The Glock was a stalemate, though, and they were keeping it as evidence if the case ever did come to court and would not release it until the proper paperwork was submitted, which Big Dave had to accept was never going to come, because it did not exist. It reminded him of the time he had been compromised on a mission with the SAS in Serbia hunting war criminals from the Balkan wars. He and a team member had been forced to flee to Romania and the British embassy with their weapons. The embassy could not hand the weapons in to the Romanian police, and nor could they take them out of the country so the two M16 rifles fitted with grenade launchers, and two Browning pistols had been hastily deactivated by removing the firing pins and were probably to this day still in the basement of the embassy next to the various office supplies and boxes of Christmas decorations.

Big Dave climbed the steps and pressed the bell for Verity’s flat. There was a camera just above his head and he was buzzed through almost immediately and climbed the stairs, the door to her flat opening when he reached the landing.

“How on earth did you get out?” she asked when he stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him. “I asked around and was told that you shot two men in the street!”

“Allegedly,” Big Dave grinned. “That’s what you lawyers say until a person is proven guilty, right?” He shrugged. “Anyway, I figured that me getting out was down to you…”

“Well, it wasn’t. So, you have friends in high places. Higher places than I can reach, that’s for sure. And I’m a barrister, honey. Not a lawyer.”

“If I may…” Kernow interjected, from where he was seated in the corner of the lounge, nursing a mug of coffee. “Ramsay asked that Wilber-Scott bloke for a favour.”

“Nobody can grant that sort of favour!” Verity retorted.

Big Dave shrugged. “Well, I beg to differ.”

Verity shook her head despondently and sighed. “God only knows what I’ve got myself into with this case.” She shrugged, seemingly accepting that this was never going to be any different, or what she had considered normal in the past. “Coffee?”

“Please.” He turned to Jim Kernow and said, “The Dogs are back.”

“I know. I saw them out the window but figured they could keep. I saw that you chased them off.”

“Not my intention,” he replied. “I wanted a word with them.”

“Yeah, I think that’s what they were worried about,” Kernow grinned. He finished his coffee and got out of the chair with that little groan of effort that finds its way into most men who were closing in on sixty. They could go to the gym without protest, then groaned pulling on their socks. “I’ll leave you two to it. Ramsay’s got me on an errand first thing tomorrow.”

Big Dave nodded and showed him out. Verity was still struggling with the coffee machine and he walked to the window and glanced outside. He saw a black Range Rover drive past but could not see the numberplate and the light was quickly fading so the reflection of headlights and lamplight on the windows meant that he could not make out the driver, either. He couldn’t be certain that it was the MI5 heavies because Range Rover’s seemed to account for every other vehicle in Kensington. He returned to the table and spooned some sugar into his coffee and sat down at the table. Verity looked tired and he recognised that she was under duress. One moment she had been a barrister at the top of her game commanding respect and in control of everything, and the next she had a controversial case to fight and needed protection from the establishment. He suspected that it wasn’t so much a case of being threatened, but who the threat was coming from that was the problem.

“I’m really confused about this situation,” she said eventually. “You shouldn’t be standing here in my kitchen. Who sprung you, exactly?”

Big Dave shrugged. “I don’t know. One minute I’m in a six by eight concrete cell and the next minute I’m getting signed out at the duty desk sergeant.”

“That’s fast work,” she said, taking a sip of her coffee. “But it leaves me wondering why the same people who got you out can’t do the same for Caroline. She took down a man who goaded Caroline into shooting him… making her fear for her life… while you, allegedly, shot two men in the back. Granted, the men had just murdered a woman in an organised assassination, but all the same…”

“There’s always a bigger picture to see here,” he commented flatly. “But I admit that I’m not the guy to always see it. That’s why I’m generally the hired muscle…”

“I’m sure you’re underestimating yourself.”

He wasn’t fishing for compliments, and he took another sip of coffee for distraction more than the hit of caffeine. The coffee was strong and bitter, and he would have preferred a cup of builder’s tea, but he knew that she didn’t have any. The second mouthful had been better than the first, so he went for a third and spilt the entire cup when a brick smashed through the window and bounced across the wooden floor among shards of glass. Verity screamed, and Big Dave dropped the cup and charged for the door. He took the stairs three at a time and rebounded off the wall at the bottom before flinging open the door and leaping down onto the pavement. The Range Rover sped up, the tyres chirping against the tarmac as the traction control fought to keep the vehicle composed under such hard acceleration.

“Really…?” he growled. “A fucking brick? Fucking amateurs…” He thudded back up the steps and was frustrated when he found himself locked out. He pressed the bell several times, impatient and somewhat angry at himself for charging headfirst into a situation that he had no control over. He could have blundered headfirst into gunfire, and he hadn’t checked the landing for a pincer movement. It had been rage, and a textbook display in what not to do under attack. He was buzzed in, and he thudded angrily up the stairs. The door to the flat was still open and he walked in to find Verity on her hands and knees clearing up the glass. He bent down and retrieved the pieces of his broken cup. “We need to go someplace else,” he said flatly.

“No way!” she snapped. “You think I’m scared of a house brick?”

“They know where you live.”

“That’s right.” She paused, nimbly getting to her feet. “And if these idiots are from the Security Service, then I know where they are, too.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” he said lightly. “What are you suggesting?”

She looked at him intently and said, “I’d like you to help me cover up that window. Then we’ll get some Thai food delivered.”

“Sounds good.”

“And then I’d like you to stay the night.”

“Sounds even better.”

“Great. I’ll be going over my notes on the case, while you’ll be finding something on the television to watch. You can have the spare room,” she said pointedly. “And then in the morning we’re going to Security Service headquarters, and we aren’t leaving until I’ve read them the riot act…”

Chapter Twenty-Five

HM Prison Bronzefield, Surrey

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move and she couldn’t scream. When she opened her eyes, the nightmare was ongoing. It hadn’t been a dream. It was real, and somebody was killing her. Her eyes could barely make out her killer’s face in the gloom, just the whites of her frenzied eyes. Caroline’s arms were pinned to her sides by the sheet that had been rolled and looped around her. The woman was pulling downwards with one hand, gripping both ends together, her other hand clamped tightly over Caroline’s mouth, her thumb and forefinger gripping her nose. The result was brutally efficient. Caroline could not raise her arms to fight off her attacker, and she couldn’t get a breath as she heaved and twisted and desperately struggled for her life.

Caroline dug her fingers into the mattress where she had earlier made a small incision. she could feel the makeshift spear tip but struggled with her dexterity as she caught hold of the weapon and tried to spin it around in her hand. The woman was oblivious, but she could see that the fight was leaving her victim, and the end was in sight. Another ten seconds. Once Caroline succumbed to unconsciousness, the task would be easy. Without the frantic struggle she could simply press her hand over her mouth and keep her nostrils pinched for another few minutes and death would soon follow.

The first blow made no difference. Nor the second or the third. It was only when she drove the makeshift spear deep into the flesh underneath her cellmate’s armpit that the woman released her grip on her mouth and the pressure on the rolled sheet loosened. Precious air flooded Caroline’s lungs and she could feel her equilibrium start to return. She kept up her attack on the woman’s side, then realised that the blade had either broken or remained inside her attacker, and she was simply pounding her with her fist. The woman released her grip on the bedsheet altogether and Caroline was able to reach the other shiv underneath her thin foam pillow and slashed the woman across the face. Strangely, the woman had not screamed as the blade had driven a deep gash over her top lip and entire right cheek, and Caroline realised why when she hauled herself off the bunk and slipped on the blood on the floor. She flicked on the light switch and the single domed shatterproof light set in the centre of the high ceiling lit the horror of the aftermath of the attack. The woman was bleeding out. She had lost at least a pint of blood and the only time that was ok was when you donated it and had a cup of sweet tea and a biscuit afterwards. Caroline’s right hand was red and sticky, and she wiped it on her own top as she took in the scene. Her cellmate had slumped on the floor and was breathing shallowly. There was already twice the amount of blood on the floor, and the pool was spreading rapidly. The woman looked up at Caroline and grimaced.

“You fucking bitch…” she managed. “You absolute fucking bitch…”

“Right back at you…” Caroline knew that her time was limited. The guards controlled the lighting in the public areas, but the prisoners controlled the lights in their cells. ‘Lights Out’ was a strict order that ignoring was followed by serious repercussions. It would not be long before a guard spotted their light through the tiny inspection window and came to investigate. “Who put you up to this?”

“Fuck off…” she seethed, but her voice was barely audible, her breathing laboured and her lips bloody.

Caroline knelt and pressed the bedsheet into the wound forcing the woman to wince. It had not been her intention to cause her further discomfort, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt in loosening her tongue. “You’ve got a punctured lung and liver damage. I can stop the bleeding and call for a guard,” she said. “Or I can watch you bleed out. It’s your choice.”

“Go to hell…” she whispered.

“I think you’ll get there first.”

The woman tried calling out but stopped mid-sentence, unable to summon the effort, and stared up at Caroline frustrated and beaten.

“You’ve got a child,” said Caroline. “I heard you saying goodnight to him when I was in the queue for the phone…”

“Bitch…”

“Tell me who paid you to do this. I can protect you.”

“You have no sway,” the woman said weekly. “You’re nothing. Just like the rest of us.”

Caroline pulled the balled-up sheet away and blood bubbled out of the wound, frothy and thin. She pressed it back tightly and said, “That’s lost you about a minute…”

“Fucking bitch…”

“Do you want to see your son again, or not?”

“Nelson,” the woman said reluctantly.

“Who is he?”

She shrugged. “A dog…”

“A dog? You mean with the Security Service guards?”

“Right…”

“How do you know him?”

“Shit, woman… I’m dying here…”

“So, hurry up and tell me.”

“I’m Five, too,” she replied, finding amusement in Caroline’s reaction despite her situation. “Right, you don’t know the lower order troops like me. One of The Untouchables, that’s you. Charles Forester’s girl… Mereweather’s poster woman… Ramsay’s bitch…” She paused, her eyes flickering. “Well, it looks like the sun has finally set on that illustrious career, little Miss Untouchable…” The woman smiled as Caroline stared at her, unable to hide her bewilderment. She was weak, now and talking was an effort. “It’s all about control, little Miss Untouchable… Ramsay’s unit was a step too far for the director, and for the PM…”

Caroline did not reply. She merely pressed the sheet tightly, screamed for help at the top of her lungs and waited for the chaos that would ensue.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Bisley Rifle Range, Surrey

The Stickledown range at Bisley extended to one thousand-one-hundred-metres and Rashid was using every one of those metres to put bullets through the bullseye of the paper target. Lying prone on a tartan rug, boxes of .303 bullets beside him, he dropped a bullet into the breech each time he worked the silky-smooth bolt of the Lee Enfield (SMLE) rifle, even though the weapon had a ten-round box magazine. Beside him, resting perfectly still on a tripod, his spotting scope allowed him to confirm another hit.

“Doesn’t look much like a sniper’s rifle,” Jim Kernow commented.

Rashid had known that someone was behind him but had reckoned on a range officer. If the gruff Cornishman had surprised him, he didn’t show it as he took up tension on the trigger. The two-stage trigger clicked once, then he steadied his breathing and held on the outbreath as he squeezed. The rifle stock hammered against his shoulder and two seconds later, the bullet punched clean through the bullseye. “It was at one time, but not today…” Rashid worked the bolt – silky smooth and probably the best bolt-action ever made - and the empty brass case ejected a few feet away onto a scattering of spent cases. “Does the job, though.”

“No telescopic sight?”

“We call them scopes.”

“No telescopic scope, then.”

“Just scope. Or optic. They were telescopic a hundred and fifty years ago, just a telescope fixed onto the weapon.” He paused. “No. It’s good to practice all disciplines.”

“Have you ever entered competitions?”

“A few.”

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“Did you win?”

“Yes,” Rashid replied neutrally.

“What did you win?”

“A silver teaspoon.”

“What?” Kernow frowned.

Rashid shrugged. “In America, you’d probably get vouchers to a gun store, or even win a shiny new assault rifle, but at Bisley, you get a silver teaspoon…”

“That’s probably one of the most British things I’ve ever heard…” he grinned. “And you can hit that little thing at the end of the range without a scope?”

“Only about ten people in history could consistently hit the bull at this range with iron sights, and I believe nine of them are dead…”

Jim Kernow laughed but trailed off when he realised that Rashid was being serious. He watched, as the man reloaded and settled in for another shot. The range officer had lent him a pair of noise cancelling headphones when he arrived and as the weapon discharged, he was glad to be wearing them. “How old is that thing, anyway?”

“This is from around nineteen-forty, but the rifle came into service in eighteen-ninety-five and served as Britain’s infantry rifle until nineteen-fifty-seven. Dozens of other countries used it, too. I saw them in the Taliban’s hands in Afghanistan. Scoped up, it’s a formidable sniper rifle even by today’s standards. It’s just modern ballistics and materials that have crept ahead.” He paused. “But this thing will still be working in a hundred years from now…” He got up and regarded Kernow curiously. “What’s going on, Jim?”

“Oh, quite a bit.”

“Ramsay needs me?” He shrugged. “It’s only been a couple of weeks, not even that. I’m not interested.”

“Why?”

“I can’t focus. Not since my mother died. That’s what I’m doing here… trying to forget.”

“Can’t forget, lad. You might want to, but death is just a part of life. If you push the thoughts aside, you’ll do your mother a disservice.” Kernow paused. “It only prolongs the pain if you push it all aside, anyway.”

“You’re an expert in this?”

Kernow chuckled. “I’m almost sixty, sunshine. I’ve lost my mother, my father and my older sister, my aunties and uncles. The older you get, the more people you lose.” He stared out across the range, past the target and the butts, but at nothing all the same. “Thankfully, even though I’m divorced, my son and daughter have children and carry on the family. That’s the blessing of having kids. Otherwise, your family thins out until it’s only you left.”

Rashid started at him. He didn’t even know that the man had children, let alone was a grandfather. He thought about his aging father, his sister with her own family, and he suddenly realised that without a family of his own choosing – a wife or partner, and children of his own – he was staring into the precipice. He needed people around him, and right now he had friends that he considered family, and he could not neglect that any longer.

“Anyway…” Kernow looked back at him as if reading Rashid’s thoughts. “It’s your friends that need you. Caroline is in prison, and the dogs from Thames House have tried to put the frighteners on her barrister. Big Dave is minding her, and with King hunting Collins, well, it’s left us damned thin on the ground.”

“Where’s Jack?”

“Switzerland. Ramsay hopes that if he goes after Collins, then he’ll find King and be able to help.”

“Or get himself slotted,” Rashid replied testily. “Jack’s not a solider, and he certainly can’t go up against a killer like Collins. Not many could.” He bent down and picked up his equipment, shouldering the rifle on its authentic canvas sling. “We’d better get going,” he said decisively.

“Good lad,” Kernow replied. “Glad you’re aboard. Now, get that museum piece packed away because we’re flying out to Geneva tonight.”

Rashid smiled and as when they reached the short range, he dropped the equipment at his feet and unslung the rifle. “Not quite a museum piece,” he said wryly, then took two spring clips and loaded them through the breech into the magazine. “This gun’s party trick was the Mad Minute. A soldier would use his middle finger on the trigger and feed the bolt quickly with his trigger finger, but there was another way…” Rashid took out a piece of string and looped it around the trigger, pulling the trigger back against the trigger guard and tying it tightly. He then braced the rifle into his hip and worked the bolt quickly, the weapon firing every time the bolt slotted home. The result was ten rounds fired almost as fast as any semi-automatic assault rifle. “That’s quite something, isn’t it?” he said, the cloud of cordite from the old cartridges slowly clearing like a dispersing fog.

“Jesus wept…” Kernow said quietly. “I wouldn’t want to be on the end of that lot…”

“No doubt.”

“What’s the point of practicing with an old gun like that?” Kernow asked as they headed towards the range office. “You’re a superb marksman. I thought you’d use all the cutting-edge technology.”

Rashid shrugged as he slung the rifle over his shoulder on its sling. “I suppose because I practice without the tech, I can make the shot with the tech. Train hard, fight easy…”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Thames House, London

“This is quite unprecedented, Ms…?

“As I said before, just thirty seconds ago, my name is Verity Harding, KC.”

The woman on the desk spent more time than was necessary studying the computer screen underneath the solid marble plinth on top of the unnecessarily high desk, which was in essence a barrier to the public. Not that the public often got past the armed police officers outside and the uniformed MI5 security guards in the foyer. She had, by all accounts, argued an exceptionally strong case for being permitted inside the building of the organisation who along with the police, were joint-prosecuting her client. She begrudgingly picked up the phone, turning her head to afford herself some privacy.

“I can’t believe you didn’t have more clout…” she said out of the corner of her mouth.

“What can I say?” Big Dave shrugged. “I was a field agent. I usually got my orders on the fly. I served under the directorship of Simon Mereweather, then in Ramsay’s unit.”

“Even so…”

“I got us past the armed guards, didn’t I?”

“I’m not worried about them as much as this dragon,” she whispered, but as she looked back at the receptionist wasn’t sure if she had been quiet enough because the woman was staring daggers at her, and her demeanour had become even more abrasive.

“I don’t know… she says she’s a KC, but doesn’t look the type… I don’t know… about fortyish…” the woman said, looking Verity up and down with disdain.

Verity stood patiently, trying not to show her annoyance. She was thirty-five and usually received comments that she looked younger. It had been a curse throughout her law career, the root of genuine annoyance, exacerbated by the fact that she was an attractive woman and the men she worked with or went up against never seemed to be judged by the same criteria. Because she was young and attractive she had always struggled for acceptance in a profession dominated by fifty-something, privately educated white men.

The woman put down the telephone and said, “Wait over there…” She pointed to a row of bench seats against the wall. “Someone will be with you.”

“Who?”

“Someone…”

“I want to speak to Director Saunders.”

“That will not be possible.”

“Two men from the Security Service have threatened me and have thrown a brick through my window. I want to speak to the Director.”

“Do you have any proof of any of this?” the woman asked indignantly.

“I witnessed the threat,” said Big Dave. “Two men. One of them was young, tattooed and rough-looking called Clark, the other was about fifty with a beer gut called Nelson. And I saw them drive past around the time that the brick came through the window.”

“I don’t know either of those men,” she replied coldly. “Do you have a vehicle registration?”

“No,” Big Dave replied.

“Ah, well then…”

“They threatened me!” Verity snapped.

“Madam, if you don’t lower your voice and stop being aggressive…”

“I’m not being aggressive! I’m exasperated!”

“Madam, I am feeling threatened by your aggression…” She pressed a button underneath the desk and two security guards approached. Behind them, three armed police officers walked through the automatic doors.

“I get it,” Verity said quietly. “The establishment at work…” The woman did not reply, but she looked at the security guards and nodded. Big Dave put his arm around Verity and guided her towards the door, past the guards and armed police officers and back outside. He walked her quickly, but when they were past the security cordon she pulled away angrily. “Thanks for nothing!”

“Relax,” he said kindly. “That was classic stage managing back there. Another few seconds and it could have gone south quickly.”

“What do you mean?” she looked up at him earnestly.

“The police were flanking us,” he replied. “One of the men from outside your flat was loitering near the bank of lifts…”

“Which man?”

“The older guy with the paunch. Nelson. One of the men she just said she didn’t know. He had a two-way radio in his hand, seemed to be waiting for orders.” He paused. “Or giving them.”

“They wouldn’t have shot us,” she said, then added, “Would they?”

Big Dave shrugged as they reached the riverbank and the tapered lawn running between the road and the river. “I think it was being choreographed. I think we had mere seconds before they fired. The support staff were already leaving, and the two female receptionists had hurried into the back office.” He paused. “Standard procedure in the event of a security breach…”

“Standard procedure when you want to commit a double murder and call it justifiable homicide?”

“The man with the radio was containing the area. Sanitising it of witnesses.”

“That’s unbelievable.”

Big Dave nodded in agreement. “Well, there’s two points to remember from this experience,” he said as he watched the murky waters of the Thames. “The woman that you’re defending was given no choice but to discharge her weapon. The CCTV from the foyer of The Savoy shows that, as clear as day. The same people who are refusing to back her now, are the same people who started to surround us back there and remove any witnesses.”

“And what’s the second point?”

“That sort of order can only come from the very top…”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Zürich

King studied the man on the screen. Ramsay’s AI program using the cameras throughout Zürich’s traffic system CCTV network was as good as the man’s promise. Once it had flagged a subject it locked on and was extremely difficult to break. Collins had disappeared, but they didn’t come any better than the former MI6 assassin. He had simply outrun the system by continuing to alter his appearance and use different methods of transport. Once out of the city and the myriads of minor roads he had simply disappeared.

The gunman who Collins had battled with on the street had not fared so well. King had scoured the possibilities for over an hour as the system made ‘hits’ on individuals, and even though the man had practiced good fieldcraft skills, he had made the mistake of going to ground at a hotel. King had done the same thing many times. It gave you a base. The desk fielded calls or anybody asking about you, food and drink were on hand, there were multiple escape routes, and hiding out in public gave some security. Hotels had CCTV, telephone lines to the police – they were, in essence, a fortress for someone on their own in need of rest and to reassess.

King did not have a name, but he had an image that he had screenshot from the CCTV footage. He had stayed in enough hotels to know two things. Money talked, but managers said little. If you wanted to bribe someone, then you needed to look further down the food chain. Doormen or concierges were in the know, or they could always find out what you wanted to know. They willingly accepted tips, took tips or shifts from subordinates, and made it their business to have side-hustles. In some cities they could get you tickets for a sold-out show, in others they could arrange for prostitutes and see that they got to a guest’s room without drama, and they always knew the best places in town to eat and drink. They knew the gossip, too. King spotted the doorman and went in heavy. He took out his phone and scrolled to the screenshot and stuck it under the man’s nose. While the man was somewhat taken aback, he looked at the photograph, nonetheless. King had a fold of euros in his left hand, and the number was big. At least a week’s wages, perhaps two.

“That man is a paedophile,” he said. “He has escaped police charge on a technicality and has the details of the whereabouts of a young girl trafficked into a sex ring, and I need to question him. Now.”

“That still sounds like a job for the police,” the doorman replied, but he was looking at the fold of notes in King’s hand, which King took to be a good sign. He had rolled the dice but thought he had also covered the bases of humanity.

“The man has diplomatic immunity,” King ventured. “The police have their hands tied. But I don’t.” He pressed the money into the doorman’s hand. “I just need a room number and ten minutes to… appeal to his moral compass, so to speak…”

“Well, I…”

“Do you have children?”

“Yes…”

“Do you have a daughter?”

“Sir, I…”

“Judging from the look on your face, I’ll take it that you do,” said King. “Imagine if she disappeared and you knew who took her… were ninety-nine percent sure… and the police told you they couldn’t do a damned thing about it… Well, this little girl’s parents are desperate. They’re at their wit’s end.” King took out another fold of banknotes and added it to the first, making a sizeable wedge of cash. “That’s two thousand euros, there. A room number, and ten minutes.” He paused. “From one father to another, it’s all I ask…”

The doorman nodded and asked to see the screenshot again, then took one of it with his own phone. He pocketed the money and walked over to the office and returned five minutes later. He did not even look at King as he walked past and slipped a keycard into his hand. “Room three-one-nine,” he said, then opened the door for a young couple and did not look in King’s direction again as he greeted them warmly and pointed them in the direction of the reception desk.

Jackpot.

King took the stairs because he could get a feel for the layout of the floors and note the escape routes. It always paid to be able to get out of trouble faster than you got into it. By the time he reached the third floor he could see that each floor was a carbon copy of the one below. The hotel was old but had undergone a massive refurbishment within the past twenty-years. Room 319 was on the south end of the building, directly beside the fire escape, which King now knew to back onto the carpark, which meant he had a quick escape route when he had the man with him. He did not doubt whether he could successfully subdue the man, he had the size advantage and was confident in his abilities, and he had duct tape and cable ties to keep him under control once he subdued him, which he would do with the 9mm Beretta which was hanging heavily in his inside jacket pocket.

He walked past the room glancing at the door and waited beside the fire escape door, listening intently. As he waited, the corridor light switched off on its sensor, and he noticed the thin sliver of light underneath the door. As he had walked past, he had noticed the doorframe running down each side and above the door. It was around an inch thick and an inch wide. Any security chain or latch would be fixed to the door and the doorframe. Usually above the door handle. He would use the key card but would lose vital seconds if the man had the chain or latch in place, and he doubted that he would get lucky. King had made it his standard operating procedure to lock hotel doors, apply security chains – even wedge the doors in place – and he doubted any paid assassin would do anything differently.

King pulled the pistol out from his inside jacket pocket and screwed the suppressor into the threaded adaptor on the muzzle. It was a well-designed set-up. The Beretta 92 had a barrel that protruded slightly from the frame and the ‘gunsmith’ had clamped the adaptor in place and avoided it touching the frame which would cause the weapon difficulty in cycling another round after being fired. All he had to do now was hope and pray that the weapon worked, but he had used the contact before and had never been let down in the past. With the pistol in his right hand and the keycard in his left, King walked calmly to the door and in one smooth motion, swiped the card, pulled down the handle when the lock illuminated green, and pushed the door inwards with his foot. The chain pulled tight and stopped the door and King hovered the suppressor just millimetres from the doorframe, lined up on where the chain would be secured and fired two shots. The doorframe splintered and chain went slack, and he kicked the door inwards and stepped into the room, the sights of the pistol steady on the man’s forehead. King allowed the door to swing close behind him on the fire safety hinge. The man was frozen to the spot. He had been working at his laptop and had tipped the chair over as he had stood up in a hurry.

“Hands in the air, sunshine,” he said quietly, yet firmly. The man complied and King took a pace towards him. As he edged past the bathroom and closer to the bed, he could see a Browning pistol on the bedside table and an open laptop on the desk in front of the man. As if reading King’s mind, he glanced at his pistol. “Don’t even think about it. You’ll never make it…”

“Who are you?” the man asked, and King noticed that he was quite calm. Given that he had a silenced 9mm pistol aimed at his head, that was quite something.

“Sit down on the bed. Slowly!” King told him. When he had complied, King said, “We’re after the same man. Richard Collins. I’m figuring that you have a first-class intelligence service feeding you information. You caught up with him outside the bank and that would have taken some doing, considering Collins has lasted this long by being invisible.” King paused. “I want what you know.”

The man regarded King for a moment, then said, “Why do you want him?”

“I’m going to kill him.”

“You are British?”

“Yes.”

“Then you will know why I have been sent to kill him,” he said. “And you will want to kill me also…”

King shrugged. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

“An ancient Arabian proverb.”

“If you say so. Although India might disagree,” King replied. “But I think we can both agree that Winston Churchill stole it a few thousand years later.”

“He stole a great many things…”

King said nothing. To some people, Churchill got Britain through the war and was the greatest Briton in history. To others he had enabled the nation of Israel and the demise and repression of Palestine, carved up the Middle East, perpetuated famine in India and saw Britain as being the winners in a social Darwinian hierarchy of race and religion. The thought made King wonder about sides and perspective. The good guys in the white hats, the bad guys wearing black. But when it came down to it you just had to pick a side and keep fighting because the other side simply wanted to win, and that meant that they wanted you dead.

King didn’t see it coming. Abdullah moved with lightning speed and kicked the pistol out of his hand. The first kick was immediately followed by another snapping roundhouse that caught King in the ribs and jolted through his body. King had never seen two kicks performed so quickly but realised that thought would do little for him now. The man did not try his luck with a third, and this time King saw the punch coming and countered with a block with his right forearm, immediately snapping his fist backwards and cracking his knuckles into Abdullah’s jaw. The confined space made footwork difficult, and King struggled to follow up with another blow as his feet caught in the bedding that had found its way partially onto the floor when the man had made his move. Abdullah cannoned off the wall, reeling from the blow, and rather than upsetting his balance, the motion threw him back towards King and he brought his knee up into King’s stomach, knocking the wind from him. King lashed out with his fingers as he bent double and managed to jab one of the man’s eyeballs. Abdullah screamed and covered his injured eye and King stepped around the bed to give himself space as he caught his breath. He was cursing inwardly. The pistol was lying on the floor near the door and neither man was close enough to reach it before the other could stop him. It remained a poison chalice, because no good would come from reaching for it. Abdullah smiled like he knew something King didn’t. He was a decade and a half younger than King, and there was not an ounce of fat on the man’s body. King, although considerably heavier was in great shape and he had a lot of muscle on his opponent, but crucially, he was lacking something that the man had in spades. Arrogance. King had been that way once. Before life had knocked it out of him. Abdullah still thought he had a chance despite King’s counter attacks. King squared his stance – feet shoulder width apart, left foot forward, leading with his left fist. From here he could box or kick or even throw himself into a grapple. But then King paused a beat because he wasn’t so sure that the man had underestimated him but knew that he had an advantage of another sort. He had reached behind his back and now stood there with a large, curved knife. A khanjar. The blade had been sharpened on both edges and even without testing it, he could tell from the way that the light glinted on the fine edges of the blade, and from the smile on the man’s face, that it was wickedly sharp. King had his own folding knife in his pocket, but the blade was only three inches long and he would have wasted time opening it. Abdullah was effectively wielding a small sword, and King needed protection from it, as much as he needed a weapon. As soon as Abdullah drew the khanjar, he grabbed the man’s laptop off the desk beside him. It was a MacBook Air, and although compact, was made from metal and tapered from back to front. King waited for the man to attack, and as soon as the blade flashed in the air, he shielded his face and kicked the man midway between his navel and crotch. He had gone in too high, but Abdullah doubled over all the same and King swiped the laptop across the man’s forearm and heard a crack. He did not wait to discover whether he had broken a bone or the device and as Abdullah recoiled and slashed the knife in desperation, King jabbed the thin end of the laptop into the man’s throat. He heard gristle snapping and air escaping, and he followed up with an identical strike and Abdullah fell backwards, the knife on the floor beside him and both hands clutching around his windpipe. He was kicking out his legs and arching his back, and reminded King, somewhat macabrely, of a landed fish thrashing around on the deck of a boat.

King tossed the laptop onto the desk and walked past him, picking up the pistol. By the time he checked it over and walked back to the desk, Abdullah was in his death throes. King checked his watch, focusing on the second hand as it swept seamlessly across the watch face, appreciating the distraction as the man died. When he looked back at the Iranian he was staring blankly back at him, making neither sound nor movement. King turned back to the laptop and opened the lid. The device was working but locked. Fancy and as slim as it was, it was clearly as tough as hell. Metal. Who knew? He bent down and used Abdullah’s thumb print to open it. He opened the settings and changed the language back to English and took off the password and thumbprint option. The email server showed a message in the draft folder. King smiled. If two people shared access to an email account, then they could sign in, change the draft email and save the document. Without sending it they could communicate without detection. It had been standard operating procedure with MI6 and MI5 for almost two decades, but terrorists and criminals had now caught up with the practice. However, now that King had access to the account, he could check the IP Address of anybody signing in on a different device or network. King searched quickly and downloaded the BlueJeans app that gave people remote access to a device. He opened the app and sent an invite link to Ramsay’s email address. He then closed the lid and pulled the charger out of the wall. Ramsay would now have access to go through the files and every application on the device. If he couldn’t get the device to Ramsay for further inspection, then at least the technology genius would have remote access to every file.

King put the laptop and charging cable into the leather laptop bag, then bent down and checked the body for identification. He doubted the details would be authentic, but he took the man’s wallet, passport and phone. The phone was locked, and he used Abdullah’s still warm thumb to unlock it, and again he changed the language and password in the settings. Noticing the man’s smartwatch, he took that, too. The model was equipped with a GPS feature and would give a detailed account of the man’s movements over the past few months. Between the laptop, phone and watch, there could be enough to lead him to the man’s handlers, and that meant the people behind the London attack. Lastly, King slipped the Browning 9mm pistol into the laptop back and headed for the door.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

King got behind the wheel of the BMW and took brief comfort in the darkness. The serenity, however, would be short-lived. It would only be a matter of time before somebody raised the alarm, and he started the engine assuming that they already had. As he selected drive the text message alert vibrating in his pocket intrigued him. He had built a rapport with DI Grant, and any Interpol updates the man could give him would be most welcome, and as he took the phone from his pocket, he felt guilty that this had been his first thought, and that Caroline languishing in prison had not been the first thing to spring to mind. She had been second. He suddenly realised that he perhaps tended to stand back because she was so fiercely independent and normally would never accept help, and this had allowed him to go straight after Collins on a vendetta when he should have stayed to be near her and help her legal representative. He sighed as he opened the message and was met with a third option.

King replied and waited. Five seconds later he answered the call.

“The answer’s no…” he said tersely.

“But you don’t know what I’m about to ask,” Ramsay replied tersely.

“I don’t work for you.”

“But you’re happy to use my program to hack into the Swiss police CCTV system,” he said pointedly. “That reminds me, I must update the access code. Right after I make some calls about a certain police detective using the Police National Computer and Interpol to aid and abet a civilian engaged in criminal activities…”

“Ouch.”

“I don’t have to, of course.” He paused. “If you gave me another option.”

“I’ve got an option for you…”

“Ouch…”

King sighed. “It’s about the Prime Minister’s deal with AJB Suisse, isn’t it?”

“You’re wasted in the field,” Ramsay replied with genuine admiration. “It is. How did you know?”

“Well, it was either that or cuckoo clocks,” King replied. “Or chocolate, I suppose.”

“We need to meet,” said Ramsay. “I’m staying at the Hotel Schweizerhof. Join me for dinner. One hour.”

King checked his watch. He needed to get out of here, and he had suddenly remembered that he hadn’t eaten all day. “I’ll be there,” he said and ended the call.

The drive through Zürich was somewhat cathartic. It was the first time since going after Collins that he had time to kill and someplace to be. He found himself thinking of Caroline and the events that had brought them this far. He had gone haring after Collins and left Caroline to fend for herself. Not that he could protect her from the outside, but he could have been there to help fight her case. And for what? He was no closer to finding Collins and had killed his only lead. It would be down to Ramsay to discover something on the man’s laptop, and right now it did not look like he had a line of credit to use up. But something told him that if he helped with whatever Ramsay had planned for AJB Suisse then he would be able to roll the dice again.

King parked the car and waited in the dark as he gathered his thoughts. He took out the Beretta and used a small hex key to take off the suppressor adapter, then replenished the magazine with two 9mm bullets and made the weapon ready before tucking it back into his inside jacket pocket. He then took the dead assassin’s pistol out of the leather messenger bag and slipped it underneath his seat.

The hotel looked expensive from what he could see of the façade and lighting, and he would just have to hope that he would be allowed to dine in his casual clothes. He climbed the steps and walked confidently past the uniformed doorman and into the well-lit foyer with its domed chandeliers and confusing 3D effect floor tiles. Half of fitting into a situation or one’s surroundings was merely a matter of confidence, and King ignored the front desk as he headed for the sound of the restaurant and bar. La Soupière was the formal restaurant with Café Gourmet offering a more casual experience of bistro style dishes. King saw Ramsay at a table in the bar. The sight of the man in his wheelchair suddenly pained him. Life just wasn’t fair. Beside him Jim Kernow nursed a pint of something very dark while he eagerly dug his fingers into a bowl of nuts.

King pulled out a chair and sat down, placing the laptop bag on the table. “Your expense budget seems to have improved. Nice digs.”

Ramsay did not rise to the bait and simply said, “How far have you got with this fool’s errand?”

King did not hide being taken aback. But was unable to respond as a waitress appeared at his shoulder and asked if he would like a drink. He ordered a lager – anything local and told her to make the choice for him. When he travelled, he enjoyed sampling the local food and drink, but he had found Ramsay’s comment so vexing that he could not think about beverages.

“What is this?” Ramsay asked, pointing at the scuffed leather messenger bag.

“It belonged to the gunman who had the shootout with Collins outside the Zimmermann & Strauss Bank.”

“He’s dead?”

“Unfortunately.”

“I wondered about the BlueJeans link,” he replied, then added, “It would have been jolly handy if we could have questioned him, though.”

“We?”

Ramsay shrugged. “Well, it would seem that if we could get this Collins situation under control, then we would be able to get you back on track and deal with the here and now, and a situation that threatens one of the most vital resources of our nation.”

“I don’t work for you,” King reminded him. “I’m not sure that an organisation with no accountability to an elected leader or government is necessarily the best thing for our country.” King paused. “The serving government of the day is bad enough, unfortunately. But at least the citizens hold the vote and have the power to change.”

“It may well be in your interest, for the time being,” Ramsay replied. “And it will help Caroline’s situation, I’m sure,” he said somewhat cryptically.

“How so?” King asked, then thanked the waitress when she placed an extremely tall and thin glass of pilsner beside him. He sipped some of the beer and nodded approvingly.

“The Department works for The Crown. The Crown Prosecution Service decides who is charged and with what, or if they are even charged at all. There may still be a chance of Caroline avoiding trial.”

“That sounds like bait to me. Keep The Department happy by walking their path while dangling Caroline’s freedom in front of me,” King said gruffly. “So, is it you who’s baiting me, or your new boss?”

“What difference does it make?”

“I don’t like being played, Neil. You of all people should know that.”

Ramsay stared at him. Throughout his career he had met men he would think of as ‘rough sorts’, and he had met men and women who had astounding intellect, but he had seldom come across someone who was both. King was more than a rough sort, he was a cold-blooded killer, but he could also see the bigger picture. “It was mentioned that the problem could be made to go away,” he replied. “Lomu ran a problem in London…”

“By killing two men on the street…” Jim Kernow interjected. “Let’s get it in perspective so that King knows how much sway Wilber-Scott seems to have…” He shrugged, then before turning back to his ale and nuts said, “Sorry, boss, but there’s a lot at stake here, especially for Caroline.”

“Is that true?” asked King.

“Yes.”

“Then he’s using Caroline as a pawn to hunt out whoever is behind this…”

“Possibly…”

“Then Caroline is being played by both sides,” said King. “I don’t like that at all. In fact, that’s really pissed me off. Somebody will bleed for this, Neil. You’d just better be sure it’s not you or Little Lord Fauntleroy of The Department.” He paused, staring at Ramsay coldly. “Caroline is tough and resourceful, but let me assure you, prison is a terrible place to be when you have enemies inside.”

“I understand,” replied Ramsay. “And I will do whatever it takes to see that she goes free.”

King nodded, but he had the uneasy feeling that he had just added to Caroline’s problems, taking up another string of a marionette. Caroline was the puppet, and too many puppet masters were holding the strings. “Alright, I’m in. But we need to make this quick…”

“Excellent, let’s eat,” Ramsay said decisively and wheeled himself away from the table. Jim Kernow dutifully picked up Ramsay’s drink along with his own. King followed, drink in his left hand and shouldering the leather messenger bag to keep his right hand free.

They were seated at a round table in the corner of the dining room, and bread, water and menus were quickly dispensed. When the waitress took the order King opted for the seventy-two-hour braised côte de boeuf. He figured that anything cooked for three days had to be worth a try. Jim Kernow opted for the duck with balsamic and orange, while Ramsay made it clear to the waitress that he had pre-ordered his meal with reception. King didn’t say anything. Ramsay’s food repertoire was that of a five-year-old’s.

“The Prime Minister has made a deal with AJB Suisse that will see the NHS under control of US pharmaceutical company Merrick & Webb. Not directly, but a merger is on the cards, as is bankruptcy of AJB Suisse after being written off as a bad debt. The American President, several of his administration cronies and financial backers who got him elected all hold major stakes in Merrick & Webb. The NHS will be hamstrung, forced to purchase everything from cancer treatments to weight-loss jabs to vaccines from America. This would be devastating for British and European pharmaceutical companies, and the thin end of the wedge for the NHS that will lead to healthcare privatisation.”

“Sounds like the Prime Minister has some skin in the game,” said King. “I take it he is going to get rich from the deal, too?”

“Naturally.” Ramsay paused. “But he has covered his tracks rather well.”

“But not well enough,” mused King.

“Indeed,” Ramsay agreed. “We need to head off this deal, and the subsequent merger with Merrick & Webb and the chance of giving the Americans control of our health service’s purchasing.”

“Not our usual territory,” King said pointedly.

“Well, you say that…” Ramsay said as he buttered a piece of bread roll. “Arthur Wilber-Scott wants the place raised to the ground. No company, no deal with Merrick & Webb.”

King hesitated while the waitress and a male colleague brought their meals to the table. When King saw the size of the portions, he regretted not ordering a starter, because he had assumed that the rib of beef would have been whole, but instead there were just three thin slices of beef dressed on top of a smear of sauce with a mouthful of piped potato and a few cubes of caramelised root vegetables. Jim Kernow must have been having similar thoughts because half of his duck breast seemed to have got lost between the kitchen and their table. Ramsay’s pre-order was entirely off-piste. A fillet of battered, deep-fried fish, perfectly uniformed chips served upright in a tiny basket and a miniature copper saucepan of pea puree, which he immediately handed back to the waitress. King was about to make a quip about how he only ever seemed to eat beige food but decided to give the man a break. Ramsay wouldn’t have appreciated his humour, anyway. Instead, he cut into his beef and took a mouthful. Surprisingly, for something cooked for seventy-two-hours the protein hadn’t surrendered completely and the meat was still pink. It was probably the tenderest and best mouthful of beef that King had ever had. The bone marrow gravy was so reduced in volume that it was sticky with a flavour to match the extreme concentration. The carrots and turnips had been glazed in sugar and butter and sprinkled with cumin seeds, and the fine piping of mashed potatoes on the edge of the plate were almost equal parts potato, cream and Gruyère cheese.

The food was evidently very good because nobody spoke for a few minutes, by which time Jim and King had almost finished their meals. Ramsay had had around three times their food and seemed happy with his choice.

“I have a better way, though,” Ramsay said eventually. “AJB Suisse is a sealed facility with regards to cyber security. I have developed a programme in response to recent cyber terrorism from Russia, China and North Korea. Hackers have left companies, national institutions, even, like Jaguar Land Rover, the Co-op and Marks and Spenser unable to trade through malicious digital interference. In some cases, the hackers demand a ransom, in other cases the prize is merely the inconvenience caused, but it doesn’t get away from the fact that these hostile nations are using their hacking attacks in the same way as Russian drones and fighter jets probe the airspace of NATO alliance countries. It’s all a considered test of our defences for the time when they hit us with something big. Something catastrophic. It could be government, the NHS, or the Police Service, or it could be something unthinkable like nuclear inter-continental ballistic missiles in their silos. But the day will come when all this practice is used to devastating effect.”

“And your programme is a bug that infects a computer network?” King asked, placing his knife and fork together on his empty plate.

“Yes.”

“And by AJB Suisse being a sealed facility, you mean that it has no online ability to make remote hacking possible.”

“That’s right.” Ramsay paused, a piece of flaky white fish speared and hanging from his fork. “The facility shares data through and internal internet network. My programme needs to be uploaded manually, then opened. That’s all.”

“You make it sound easy,” King observed. “But I doubt getting into the place will be anything but.” He paused, eyeing up the rest of the fish on Ramsay’s plate. He felt short-changed. Possibly even hungrier than when he had first sat down. “Who have we got?”

“Jim, here,” Ramsay replied. King said nothing. Jim was a good man in his opinion, but he was a policeman. Solid, dependable and smart in a detective-sort-of-way. But he wasn’t and never had been an operative. “Leroy is south of the city procuring some transport,” he said of Flymo, who had become their resident helicopter pilot, his moniker derived because of the commercial lawnmower brand that hovered on a cushion of air and was probably the only thing that could hover lower. “Rashid is en route, and that just leaves Jack, who is following up a lead on Richard Collins.”

“You put Jack onto Collins!?” King exclaimed. “Are you mad?”

“The situation needs taking care of…”

“He’s not ready for a man like Collins!”

“Collins is flesh and blood,” Ramsay replied with disinterest. “After the incident outside the Zimmermann & Strauss Bank, Collins headed down to Zollikon, a small town on the lake where the manager, Franz Lipperman lived.”

“Lived?”

“Yes. Past tense. Because the police believe that Richard Collins killed Lipperman and his family and made it look like suicide. Although Luger told me that it was clear that the man did not commit suicide.”

King nodded. “So, to be clear, you sent Luger after a man who slaughtered a man and his entire family for what I imagine was just cooperating with the police?” He paused, staring at Ramsay intently. “Where is Luger now?”

Ramsay shrugged. “He hasn’t been in contact for a while. I assumed he had a lead.”

“Or he caught up with Collins and Collins spotted him and did what he does best…” King shook his head. “You can monitor Luger’s phone, right?”

“Yes, but he’s offline…”

“Patch me in,” said King. “You’ve got my number, so send me a link to whatever software you’re using to keep tabs on him and make it visible to me.”

Ramsay took out his phone and scrolled and typed for all of thirty seconds. “It’s a simple app where families can keep tabs on their circle. Nothing remotely technological or secretive.”

King checked his phone, followed the link and entered his mobile number. He checked the permissions and privacy then opened the app. He could see both his own, Jim Kernow’s and Ramsay’s locations practically on top of each other and denoted by a J, a K and an R. He supposed families used pictures. Flymo was indeed south of the city and Rashid was to the north. Both had their names instead of initials, and Lomu was in London, which King zoomed in on by simply tapping his name which had been displayed on the edge of the map. King felt a pang of anguish as he realised that Caroline was not in the circle because she did not have access to her phone and the battery would have been flat anyway. The thought made him realise that he needed to end this thing with Collins so that he would be free to support Caroline. He had already started to think about what would happen if she was found guilty and sentenced to a custodial term. He had broken into more heavily protected places than a British prison – he was about to do that with AJB Suisse - and prison guards in the United Kingdom were not armed with firearms. Whatever it took, he would get her out. They would have to disappear forever, but he was prepared to do that, too.

“We will need to perform a thorough reconnaissance of the facility,” said Ramsay.

“You and Jim can start that,” said King. “I’m going after Jack. If he catches up with Collins, then he’ll be in big trouble.”

“Reconnaissance is damned tricky from a wheelchair…” Ramsay said curtly.

“I’ve got this, Boss,” Kernow reassured him. “It’s not like I didn’t do my fair share of stakeouts in The Met. We hire a van, I’ll buy some window tint and black out the windows, then sit tight with a flask of tea and a pair of binoculars. I’ll set up a camera on a tripod as well. We’ll also need aerial footage, so you’ll have to make sure that the budget stretches to a decent photography drone. A simple app and we’ll have a bird’s eye view sent straight to your laptop.”

King smiled. He generally didn’t get on with former police officers as a rule, but he knew that Jim Kernow was a good pair of hands. King had spent his youth on the wrong side of the law, and he had been to prison, and he supposed old habits die hard. He had seen how he and his peers had been easy targets and had developed a distrust for the police, although he knew that he had been no angel growing up. However, there was something about many police officers that came over as sanctimonious to him, and he felt confident that he would know if someone was a police officer simply by talking to them. There were, however, caveats to this and he had liked DI Grant, whom he had met on his last investigation from the beginning, and there was no doubt that Jim Kernow fell into the same camp. There was also the fact that Kernow had saved Caroline when she had been shot by a Russian agent trying to kill Ramsay, and that meant that the stoic ex-police officer couldn’t do much wrong in King’s eyes.

King finished his meal at around the same time as Kernow. He wasn’t usually a dessert man, but the beef had barely touched the sides, and he found himself eying the last of Ramsay’s chips. He looked up at Kernow who was staring at Ramsay’s plate and clearly thinking the same as King. When Ramsay had finally finished and the plates had been cleared, the waitress returned with dessert menus and recommended the apple strudel. King had eaten the pastry dessert before in the Swiss and Austrian Alps and did not even open the menu. All three settled on the strudel, which was made freshly to order and would take twenty minutes. Another round of drinks was brought over, King sticking to a small lager and Kernow choosing a lemonade after the strong ale. As Ramsay’s driver he was always mindful of being on call. Ramsay chose gin and ginger beer. King smiled, the team had always commented that he drank the same as a maiden aunt at Christmas. Often a port and lemon.

“What about Flymo?” asked King.

“I’m keeping him in reserve should the team need him for extraction when we raid AJB Suisse,” Ramsay replied. “We obviously need a thorough reconnaissance, but moving forward, the plan will be to infiltrate and upload the cyber code to wipe all of the company’s records.”

“So, the total destruction of a legitimate company?” King asked casually. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

“As legitimate as any pharmaceutical company can profess to be,” Ramsay replied, his tone brittle. “The board know about the merger plans with Merrick & Webb and the financial issues faced by AJB Suisse in supplying their products at an unrealistically low price point. They also know that they would not have the forthcoming and lucrative NHS contract if not for the Prime Minister’s investment in both firms. They have been guilty of supply and demand anomalies in the past and have been suspected of using African aid programmes to human guineapig trials without consent. They are stake holders in companies investing in projects to get African children away from breast milk and onto formula, the premise of which is to stall the spread of HIV… no coincidence then that a recent AJB Suisse inoculation drive found that mothers were unable to lactate after several batches of combined vaccines…”

“Bloody hell…” Jim Kernow said quietly. “The bastards…”

“Big pharma,” Ramsay replied. “They are a necessary evil, but they profit from misery as well. They can get their heads together and find a vaccine in record time for a global pandemic, but what about cancer? It’s simply too lucrative to have a cure when there is so much money to be made from drip-feeding treatment.” He paused, shaking his head with distain. “The shocking truth, irony if you will, given the tragedy, is that the Nazis made great leaps in understanding virus and vaccine behaviour during the holocaust because they had a plethora of unwilling subjects to test and study. Our healthcare is based on inconvenient truths.”

King said nothing as he sipped his beer. Ramsay’s previous ham-fisted comment had stirred memories and feelings he had fought hard to suppress. He had been married once, and his wife had taken her life because of an aggressive cancer. He would never forget Jane’s suffering, nor the day he had returned home to her body and a note. The memory had killed his appetite, and he no longer wanted the strudel. He took his linen napkin off his lap and laid it on the table as he stood. “I’m going after Luger,” he said abruptly. “Thanks for dinner. Jim won’t say no to eating my dessert…”

Chapter Thirty

The Klausen Pass, Switzerland

The hairpin bends were so severe that they almost turned back on themselves, only the gradient prevented vehicles making a U-turn, and as much as he enjoyed the experience at first, having hired a powerful Mercedes sports saloon that handled as well as a track day car, by the sixtieth bend he had grown wearisome of the experience and had calculated that he was around halfway through his journey between the cantons of Uri and Glarus.

Collins had dismissed the idea of flying out from the airport in Zürich. The security was tight and there was CCTV everywhere. Instead, he had the gift of Switzerland being bordered by five countries all belonging to the European Union and observing the Schengen Agreement of open borders. He was heading southwest and had not yet made up his mind whether he would go to France or Italy to the south. From there, he had caches of money and weapons in Barcelona and Rome and could use various safe havens as he had done in the past, and ferries could take him across the Mediterranean to numerous countries. He had no idea who the gunman outside the bank had been, and he had no intention of running into the man again. He could guess who had sent him, and that would have to keep for another day, too. The Saudis wanted to settle the balance sheet. They had paid for a job, and Collins had been unable to see it through. Close, but close was not good enough. Normally, he would have moved heaven and earth to rectify the situation because reputation was everything. In his line of work, he would always be the first to say that shit happened. Things went wrong. But the Saudis had not given him the chance to settle it. And that would not stand. He had done enough research to know who was behind the contract and who the money-men were in London. Omar Asad had thrown contracts his way before. The man was an Iranian, and ex-secret police, which made him one mean bastard, but Collins was not overly worried about him. Getting to Hafeez would be trickier. He was a Saudi banker and was well-protected, not only because he brokered deals worth billions in a wide range of sectors, but because he was a cousin of the king. Not that this made him untouchable – the King had hundreds of cousins – but it certainly wouldn’t make things easy. Collins had long realised that when a contract was on your head, you could not rest until it was lifted. That meant taking the fight to your enemy. He had crossed path with Alex King, and he knew the man of old. King was cut from the same cloth. If Collins was alive, then he would not rest until he was dead. It was now a duel. And the same went for Omar Asad and the banker Hafeez. With the unknown gunman in the mix, he was now fighting on too many fronts, and he knew that he could not ignore a man like King by being distracted.

As the rocky mountainside flashed past on his right, and he was rewarded with another superb vista of a hundred shades of green of the valley to his left, he was left momentarily overwhelmed by his thoughts, and he reacted too late to the brake lights in front of him. He hit the brake pedal and swerved into the path of an oncoming truck. Collins weaved back into his lane and scraped the entire length of the Mercedes on the front quarter of a family mini-van. There was a cacophony of vehicle horns, and the crunching of metal as the family car hit the mountain wall and the oncoming truck swerved and collided with the barrier, perilously close to the cliff edge. Vehicles slowed and parked on the hard shoulder, and hazard lights flashed on. Collins looked in his rearview mirror and weighed his options. He was armed but could not shoot his way out of this because there were simply too many people, and this being Switzerland, it was likely that someone in the crowd may well be armed. Switzerland had one of the highest civilian gun ownership rates – and one of the lowest firearm related violence indexes – on the planet. Army reservists kept their service weapons at home, and all former soldiers were permitted to keep their weapons in the event of invasion enabling a rapid reaction force to be ready at a moment’s notice. The Swiss had American firearm freedoms, yet level-headed Centrist-European values. Collins left the pistol in the vehicle and got out to exchange insurance details. He was using a false passport and had hired the vehicle with cash, and the car hire company had swiped a credit card under the same name, but he did not want to press his luck. The digital age had made it increasingly difficult to maintain false, forged or stolen data with anti-fraud measures constantly evolving.

The driver of the family mini-van did not speak English and Collins never liked to volunteer Afrikaans or Russian, because it raised too many red flags, so he stuck to German. The driver of the truck was aggressive and although he spoke English, he did so begrudgingly and was encouraging the other driver to call the police. As was often the case with a traffic incident, there were other people getting involved who hadn’t seen enough to have an opinion but had formed one all the same. Collins tried to show his fake passport and car hire insurance details, but it was too late. Someone had called the police and as Collins surveyed the growing crowd, he knew he was in trouble. The phones were out and recording. For all he knew, he could be on somebody’s live feed on any number of social media sites. He told the English-speaking driver whose vehicle had collided with the barrier that he was getting his phone out of his car, and as he got back behind the steering wheel, he knew that there was nothing left for it. He could not risk being interviewed by the police. He knew that he would have been captured on CCTV outside the bank and there was nothing worse than cops out for blood. Collins looked at the scene in his rearview mirror, then started the engine and floored the accelerator. There was no space for the Mercedes, but he squeezed past the minivan and another car, scraping down both sides, then accelerated toward the hairpin bend. The Mercedes was both powerful and agile despite its size and he drifted through the corner in a cloud of tyre smoke and steadied the car for the straight. He was in trouble now. He had been captured on camera and there were a dozen witnesses invested in the incident. The police would soon have all they needed to start a manhunt, and that only gave him mere minutes to get away and formulate a plan.

Chapter Thirty-One

Jack Luger had his foot hard down on the accelerator and the automatic gearbox was in ‘sport’ mode and working overtime as he negotiated the hairpin bends and overtook the unsuspecting traffic on the short straights. Although he would never brag about it, he was a competent driver with a flair for driving fast. He owned a Bentley Continental GT which he drove quickly on quiet country roads and had previously driven around both Thruxton and Silverstone on track days in an old Porsche 911 that he had once owned whilst serving in the Navy. He and a few fellow officers stationed in Portsmouth had gone several times and had become an informal club. Postings changed, friendships moved on and Luger had sold the Porsche before sailing to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean to support in the Afghan War.

Luger had picked up the alert on the police channel using a radio scanner. The description was positive for Richard Collins, and it had been too good an opportunity to pass up. He was driving a route that would put him on course to intercept the suspect vehicle west of Altdorf. Beside him, the scanner continued to update the police pursuit. Switzerland played host to four official languages - German, French, Italian, and Romansh – and Luger was fluent in both French and German, and could get by with a little Italian, although he had no clue what Romansh was. French seemed to be the language of choice in this canton, and it was strange to have snippets of English spoken over the airwaves, too. But he had enough to go on and suspected that the police would already be setting up a roadblock at Altdorf. However, as he raced through the small town, and turned left onto the Klausen Pass he could see blue and red lights in his rearview mirror. He had made it ahead of the police and that meant that he was going to meet Collins head-on. Luger had a description of the vehicle – a dark blue Mercedes E450d. A powerful model that would out-drag Luger’s Audi, but he knew that the Audi had better handling and, on these roads, handling was key. Quite what he was going to do when he intercepted Collins was another matter entirely. He had seen in vivid detail from the CCTV footage quite how ruthless Collins had been with the two Swiss police officers, and he had to assume that the man was still armed. Certainly dangerous. The thought that he was unarmed and chasing to head off a trained and experienced assassin suddenly weighed heavy on him. In his haste he had neglected to plan, allowing hot-headedness to get the better of him. What was his objective? That was simple: to stop Richard Collins. How was he going to achieve his objective? He had absolutely no idea.

Luger headed out of another hairpin bend on an upward gradient and accelerated hard. The needle climbed on the speedometer and the digital readout climbed in fives and tens. He swung out and overtook a slow-moving campervan and a family estate vehicle that seemed to be debating whether to pull in at a scenic spot. Ahead of him the road was ruler straight and he saw a black Mercedes heading towards him at speed, and as the two cars drew closer, he could see that its headlamps were smashed and part of one of the light units was hanging suspended by wires.

He had him in his sights.

Jack Luger had training in advanced evasive and defensive driving, and part of the course covered attack strategies. But that day seemed a whole lot easier on Dunsford Aerodrome with its wide runways and taxiways and nice, flat grass on either side. It also seemed a whole lot slower than their alarmingly rapid closing speed. Collins would clearly be oblivious to the oncoming vehicle’s intentions, but once Luger made his move, then the status quo would change. He will have lost the advantage, and the thought scared Luger because as try as he might, he could not get the images of the two Swiss police officers and the bodies of Franz Lipperman and his family out of his mind. Collins did things to people that didn’t seem humanly possible in a civilized society. Of course, he had always known how bad the world could be, but everybody had an air of detachedness about that. Until that dark world arrived on your doorstep.

Luger took a deep breath to steady his nerves, then stamped on the brakes and turned the wheel right, then immediately left and the rear of the vehicle started to slide in a ‘Scandinavian Flick’ – a rally driving manoeuvre that unbalanced the car to negotiate sharp bends, but did not cause the vehicle to lose momentum like a handbrake turn would have done. The rear quarter slammed into the grille of the Mercedes and the impact threw Luger’s Audi back online, but the contact caused Collins to over correct his steering, and he entered a flat spin. Luger checked his mirror and watched aghast as the Mercedes veered into the path of the campervan. Evidently slowing only for the family hatchback, the campervan had overtaken the dithering driver and had made good progress of its own down the straight. Luger hit the brakes hard; his eyes fixed on the pirouetting Mercedes and the impending doom of impact.

When it inevitably happened, it was even worse than Luger could ever have anticipated. The campervan swerved violently and tipped, and Collins continued to spin directly into the estate car, the driver of which had clearly decided against stopping at the scenic spot and driven onwards. The two cars collided, and the estate left the road, climbed up the steep edge of the cliff and crashed down onto its roof, sliding into the drainage ditch on the side of the road. Collins’ Mercedes crossed the road and struck the metal barrier and rode nose high but did not go over the cliff to the road below. Luger cursed, because that would have taken the man out of the fight. He was driving too slowly now to perform a handbrake turn, so he carried out a three-point-turn, noticing that his hands were shaking and he tried to put the fear out of his mind. He drove back towards the crash, then pulled into the side of the road and got out, leaving the engine running and the gearbox in neutral. Every fibre of his being wanted to check on the innocent people caught up the carnage that he had created, but he did not have eyes on Collins, and nothing could have priority over that.

Luger got out and crossed over the road, stopping midway to pick up a rock the size of a cricket ball that had been scattered along with more rocky debris across the road from the overturned campervan. The rock wasn’t much against a gun, but it was the first weapon known to man, and nobody would choose to be hit in the face by a jagged rock weighing the best part of a kilo. As he made his way around the rear of the Mercedes, his heart sank when he saw the driver’s door hanging open and realised that Collins was no longer behind the wheel. He crossed back over the road, then froze in his tracks as Collins climbed out of the drainage ditch with a pistol in his hand. The assassin brought the weapon up to aim, and Luger pitched the rock and ran. He didn’t stop to wait and see how it transpired, but the rock caught Collins partially on the jaw but mostly on the side of his neck and he staggered backwards and fired a shot into the air as he reeled from both the pain and the shock of the rock hitting his jugular vein, which caused him to black out for all of a second, but not enough to fall to the ground. Collins regained his footing and fired at Luger as he sprinted for the Audi. Bullets hit the bonnet and grille, and Luger dodged to his left and slipped on the debris, falling to the ground and scrabbling to get back to his feet. When he looked up, Collins was advancing, the pistol raised and aiming at him. Luger stared back, the foresight of the pistol distorting the man’s face, and he knew then and there that there was no escaping the man behind the gun, or the bullet that he would never hear.

Chapter Thirty-Two

It happened in unison. The distinct and sudden ‘whomp-whomp’ of the helicopter’s rotor blades and pitch of screaming turbos, and the enveloping downdraft of rotor wash that threatened to knock Collins off his feet. A second later and the belly of the Bell Jet Ranger filled the void of sky above and behind Collins, and the tail rotor clipped the road and scattered fine stone chips over them which felt like rock salt fired from a shotgun. Collins shielded his eyes from the cloud of debris and fired at the aircraft, the bullets sparking on the metal underbelly, the shrill sound of ricochet all but drowned-out by the engine and rotor noise. The helicopter banked hard, and Collins turned angrily back to Luger, his pistol raised and ready to mete-out death.

Only, he was no longer there.

Collins cursed loudly as he spun around a full three-hundred and sixty degrees in search of his target. He caught sight of him scrabbling behind the wreckage of the camper van and smiled. He aimed and fired but Luger had already ducked down, and the three bullets punched cleanly through the panel where he had been standing moments before. Collins switched to a new magazine, dropping the empty one to the ground. He always counted off the rounds, and he was almost always accurate no matter how chaotic the firefight. He had been taught well, and he had honed his craft over the years. He looked back as the helicopter rose back over the road, this time with a figure hanging out of the open door, pistol in hand and aiming right at him. Collins threw himself over the bonnet of the Audi as bullets rained down onto the roof and windscreen – punching holes in the glass that spiderwebbed causing the glass to break off in pieces the size of a dinnerplate – and then the bullets punctured the bonnet and steam, and fluids escaped the heated engine as Collins crouched behind the front wheel for cover.

King had watched the scene from above as Flymo had banked hard and all but thrown the helicopter at Collins to distract, disorientate – anything to give Luger a chance of escape. The position of the helicopter had given King a view of nothing but sky before Flymo could level out, and thankfully, they had both seen Luger sprinting for the cover of the upturned campervan. King had jettisoned the door by pulling the emergency escape lever and took careful aim on the centre of Collins’ back, but a few corrections in the attitude of the aircraft corrupted King’s aim and he sent bullets into the Audi, correcting his aim minutely but missing the man as he had rolled over the bonnet of the vehicle. Infuriated, King changed magazines and kept the Beretta 92 ready as he shouted for Flymo to land on the road.

Luger was out of options. Collins was behind him with a pistol, and he was unarmed. The helicopter had saved him, but he could not be sure who was aboard or what intentions they had. He had not seen King hanging out of the open doorway, but he had heard a cacophony of gunfire and had just kept running. However, if he ran past the upturned campervan, then he would be on the open road with no cover. There is no worse terror than that of being unarmed against someone with a gun. Luger needed to level up, and the campervan was his only option. He ripped open the rear door and heard the groans from within. Inside, a man was hanging from the driver’s seat, suspended by his seatbelt and moaning softly, and amongst the wreckage of crockery, the spilled contents of a fridge and open cupboards, a woman rested still. Luger did not have time to check her. He found a cook’s knife amongst the scattered debris and picked it up, his eyes on the open door behind him, expecting to see Collins any minute. Among the broken china plates and cups and an upturned rubbish bin he spied an aerosol can of insect killer. He picked it up, relieved that it seemed full, and gave it a thorough shake. Even above the noise of the helicopter’s change of pitch, he could hear – or perhaps even sense – that Collins was near. He crouched down, the can in his left hand and the knife in his right, and worked his way towards the open door, despite the desire to flee almost overwhelming. As he waited for what he knew to be the inevitable, he noticed a packet of cigarettes pocking out of the woman’s jeans pocket. He put down the spray can and the knife and felt her other pocket for a lighter. His heart soared when he pulled out a gas lighter and he checked it, the flame flickering instantly. Luger picked up the can of insect killer and held the lighter in front of it, just as Collins swept into the doorway, pistol in hand. Luger sprayed the insect killer directly into the man’s face and flicked the wheel of the lighter. Collins screamed and shielded his eyes, and Luger cursed as the lighter merely sparked. He flicked the wheel again, as Collins fired the pistol and a great yellow and blue flame shot out from the can and engulfed him.

Collins staggered backwards, still firing the pistol and Luger darted back inside and flung himself to the upturned roof and dragged the woman further back from where the bullets were peppering the upturned cupboards and walls. Luger heard more gunfire – distinctly different in sound which indicated a second weapon at a different range – and he picked up the knife and headed tentatively outside.

King couldn’t wait for Flymo to land and unfastened the lap belt and dropped out of the aircraft three metres from the ground. He rolled cleanly, coming up on his feet and sprinted after Collins, who was one-hundred-and-fifty metres from him, and just two metres from the campervan where he was aiming his weapon. King opened fire, his bullets just wide of Collins, but it was enough for him to concentrate his gunfire back at King. There was a blood-curdling scream and Collins took off, and King lost him to the campervan. Further down the mountain road, vehicles had stopped in front of the scene of the accident, and he could hear police sirens in the distance.

King sprinted down the opposite side of the road, giving himself a good field of view and keeping low to the ground. He did not have any cover, but he wasn’t going to run straight into the man. There was gunfire further down the road and a commotion – a horn sounding, a crunching of metal and shattering of glass – and King already knew that Collins had stolen a vehicle. He wanted the man dead, but he needed to check on Luger. Collins could keep, but a man bleeding out would not.

He crossed over the road, pistol in hand; sights trained in front of him. There was movement in the doorway, and he had the weapon trained on Luger as he eased himself out of the upturned campervan with the knife in his hand. King lowered the pistol and saw the relief in Luger’s face. He walked up to him, reached into the rear of his waistband and took out Abdullah’s Browning and handed it to Luger.

“Follow me and watch your six…” King said and led the way down the side of the campervan and the upturned car in front. The driver wasn’t moving and King bent down and pressed his fingers against the woman’s carotid artery. There was no pulse, and her eyes were staring blankly into the middle distance. King had seen enough bodies in his time to know a lost cause when he saw one. He looked back at Luger who was covering their rear. “Dead,” he said. “We better get out of here before the police arrive. It’s only the building traffic that’s holding them up…”

“Oh God, I caused that…” Luger trailed off quietly.

“No. Collins caused that,” he replied. “Now, keep your head in the game…”

Luger nodded. He knew that King was right, but even so, had he not tried to stop Collins in such a reckless way then the woman in the car would still be alive. “How did you find me?” he asked, grateful for the distraction.

“I was scanning the police radio channels on the off chance. Collins stirred up a hornet’s nest when he killed those two cops. You?”

“The same,” Luger replied. “I think he took a car. I didn’t see what type.”

“Well, we can get in the air and take it from there.”

“Or try the local hospitals.”

“Why?”

“Because I just turned his face into a medium-rare steak…”

Chapter Thirty-Three

HM Prison Bronzefield, Surrey

Caroline hugged him and it felt good. There was no explaining how healing it felt to have human contact and feel the warm embrace from a good friend. She had been alone since the attack in her cell. Her cellmate had survived and after they had made her stable in the prison infirmary, had been whisked away by men in suits. Not that she had seen any of this, but a prison trustee working in the infirmary had spread the word that ‘some weird shit was going down’ and it had filtered back to Caroline in the canteen. The fact that there had been no police or internal investigation into the wounding of her cellmate had told her everything she needed to know – MI5 were behind it – her cellmate had voiced it and her disappearance, and the lack of any subsequent investigation had confirmed it. The fact that MI5 could make people disappear within the prison system showed that they had enough clout and sway to drop the charges against her, and that only played heavily on her mind, because she could not help but conclude that she was being used as a scapegoat in somebody’s own agenda. But what could that be? How could shutting down the unit be so important to someone, and why?

Big Dave gave her a brotherly kiss on the forehead, then took his seat beside Verity Harding, who had brought him in as her ‘legal assistant’. As was legal protocol, no guard was permitted to be present when a prisoner was in legal counsel and nor was any audio or video recording equipment.

“This is entirely unprecedented,” Verity shook her head.

“You must be wondering what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into,” said Caroline.

“It has been on my mind…”

“I can’t believe it,” said Big Dave, then added, “Well, I wouldn’t have had we not seen the lengths they were prepared to go to in Thames House…” He told her of their visit, and of the way the security had cultivated the situation, orchestrated by the man he knew as Nelson.

“That’s the name the woman used!” Caroline said excitedly. “My god, that’s a solid connection!”

“It’s a closed shop,” Verity said pointedly. “Further investigation will either show that he does not exist, or they will pull down the national security shutters. You know how it is; you worked there for long enough…”

“But not under Director Saunders,” she bit back. “I worked for Charles Forester under Director Howard, and then under Simon Mereweather and Stella Fox. They were ethical people, and Neil Ramsay is as straight as they come. Since Ramsay was tasked with running his own unit, separate from the data breach experienced at the Security Service from Russian hacking, Director Saunders has changed the service’s direction. It’s no secret that he was at university with the Prime Minister, and it’s no secret that the PM wants a single intelligence service under direct command from Downing Street that is technologically-led, and not one utilising human assets. He has as good as said that Five, Six and GCHQ need streamlining into one organisation.” She paused. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if Saunders ends up as the director. That’s why I’m in here, to have a public trial that will end in action being called to consolidate the three intelligence services.”

“I can’t defend you on hearsay and opinion,” Verity replied, not raising her eyes from the file in front of her. “We need to concentrate of the shooting…”

“I’m not going to have my day in court,” Caroline interrupted. “Three women attacked me in the shower block, and the two guards who turned a blind eye are both dead. My own cellmate turned out to be a plant, and she was put into the cell before me. Even while I was being questioned at the police station, an asset was being put in place, and that means that whoever is directly behind this has paid off the prison governor. I could have gone anywhere, but I came here and I occupied that cell.”

“She’s right,” said Big Dave. “You need to get her transferred.”

“That’s not going to happen…”

“Then she will be attacked again!” Big Dave seethed.

“I’ll lodge a petition on no confidence in the governor in light of events, but to name and accuse further and directly will only hurt your case and will likely result in a defamation case against you on top of the murder charge.”

“So, I really have been hung out to dry…” Caroline said dejectedly. She stood up abruptly, tipping the chair back on the floor with a clatter. Almost immediately, the door opened, and a male guard stood there with a look of concern. “Take me back to my cell. We’re done here…”

Chapter Thirty-Four

London

“There is a legal process that if not stringently adhered to, will compromise her case!”

“But she may not live long enough for the case to go to trial!”

Verity Harding tutted and looked out of the window. They had driven most of the way into London in silence, this being the second time they had talked since leaving the prison and ending up much like the first. An awkward silence followed and that suited Big Dave because he had the ability to lean into silence and make the other person uncomfortable. However, she grabbed the doorhandle as the traffic slowed. “I’m getting out here,” she said.

“But…”

“I don’t need your protection, either,” she said as she unbuckled her seatbelt.

“Wait!”

“Goodbye,” she said sadly and slipped out onto the kerb, closing the door of the van behind her.

“Bollocks…” Big Dave cursed loudly. He supposed the silent treatment worked on army colleagues and single mums better than it worked on thirty-something professional women with a first from Oxford and who had made silk at aged thirty.

The traffic freed and started to flow once more, and he could see Verity walking up ahead. She had a good pace, and as the traffic slowed to a crawl again, he thought he would be better ditching the van and dealing with clamping fees or parking tickets later. He cursed again. He had only just paid for the windscreen to be repaired. It turned out that his policy did not cover breakages from a dozen rounds of 9mm shot from inside the vehicle for some reason. Now with London’s war on parking, mate’s rates and friendship was going to bankrupt him. He found a loading bay and parked. He knew that he’d get a ticket or clamped, but right now he needed to keep up with Verity and see that she got home safely. That was the least he could do if she wasn’t going to allow him to protect her. He would return to his vehicle and go back to her apartment later and hope that the mood had calmed sufficiently to move forward.

He kept a hundred metres behind her. Easier said than done in a busy high-street packed with pedestrians. Far easier said than done when you were six-feet-four, eighteen stone and almost three-feet wide at the shoulders. If he hadn’t been so well trained, then he would have fallen in thirty to seventy metres behind her. Just like the two goons from the MI5 dogs had.

Big Dave had picked them up after twenty-minutes. Verity was still forty-minutes from her apartment building, and she did not seem bothered about taking the tube or a bus. She was likely enjoying the exercise after leaving the bicycle at home for a few days, and no doubt using the bracing walk to clear her head. Caroline’s case certainly wasn’t the easiest she had had, and the interference from the MI5 under the stewardship of the current director was unprecedented. America had seen it with the appointment of the FBI director under the current administration a feckless sycophant to the President and now Britain was seeing it, too. Since their visit and hasty departure at Thames House, Big Dave had been reeling inside. The thought that Simon Mereweather could have been corrupted in such a way would have been unthinkable, and there was no question of anybody corrupting Neil Ramsay. The man lived and breathed for his job and the difference he made doing it. After being paralysed by an assassin’s bullet, he had returned to work in record time and had even seen his best friend gunned down in front of him by an enemy agent. If these incidents weren’t enough to make somebody quit, then he didn’t know what would.

The younger tattooed man was closest to Verity, and the man they now knew as Nelson was taking up the rear. This gave him control of the situation. Big Dave didn’t like to assume, but he would have to assume in this case that the two men were in contact with one another via earpieces and hidden microphones. He stopped in his tracks and dipped into a shop doorway, looking the other way down the street. Two could easily be three, and he could have a watcher behind him. He watched the faces, staring at people directly and waiting for that hundredth of a second where they looked uncomfortable. He received a few strange and worried looks, but nothing that flagged someone being caught out. He waited a full minute, then stepped back out and hurried down the street unable to see Verity and more worryingly, unable to spot the two dogs from MI5.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Call it a feeling, call it a sixth sense, but Verity knew that she was being followed and she crossed over the road and looked behind her but did not notice anybody following her. That was because the two MI5 security officers were professionals and were working in tandem. The young, tattooed man had worked his way past her and was now in fact following her from in front. A technique that relied on teamwork and good communication through their two-way radios.

However, she could not shake off the uncomfortable feeling that preyed on her primordial senses. She stopped and checked her phone, looked around her, then crossed halfway over the road before changing her mind and spinning round and walking for the other pavement. She caught the movement, saw the man with tattoos and he locked eyes with her for long enough for her to know that her suspicions had been confirmed. She turned and scoured the crowd and stared directly at Nelson, who was advancing, already aware that his partner had been compromised. Verity turned around and saw the other man closing in on her. She took out her phone and crossed over the road, but suddenly the thought of calling the police did not fill her with hope. How could she, an advocate and protector of the rule of law, have such little faith in law and order? Her recent experience with MI5 and its apparent rejection of the law and the freedoms derived from it, had made her question the establishment. She put her phone away and started to run, and like anyone who had the chance, she headed for home.

Despite her look of terror, people merely parted as she ran towards them. She had started out sprinting away, looking behind her often to see if she was clear, which she was not. The younger man was gaining, and despite being older with a hefty girth, the man that they had identified as Nelson was managing to keep up. After dodging traffic at junctions and negotiating pedestrians, when she next glanced, she was horrified that the younger man was almost upon her. She darted across the road, narrowly escaping the front bumper of a taxi, but her pursuer was not so lucky, and she heard the contact and thud on the tarmac. She risked a look, and saw the man getting up, shaking off the shock of the impact. He started to hobble after her, but instead of coming to the man’s aid, Nelson ran past his partner and was only a matter of feet from her when she attempted one last burst of speed, crossed back over the road and darted to her right and took a narrow side street against oncoming one-way traffic. The pavements were narrow on either side, and she ran along the road and leapt onto the pavement as approaching drivers sounded their horns or flashed their lights to get her attention. Panicked and hearing the slapping of the man’s leather soled shoes behind her, she ducked into a narrow alleyway, then stopped in her tracks when she realised that it was a dead end. Verity turned to run, but Nelson cut off her escape. The man was red-faced, heaving for breath and soaked in sweat, but he managed an evil sneer that turned her cold. Behind her, the younger man hobbled into the alleyway and slowed to a walk. Like the other man, he too was smiling, but he was in pain and favouring his left leg which had taken the brunt of the impact with the taxi. Verity recognised the type of smile, tough. A powerful man intent on hurting a weaker individual. Verity had prosecuted rapists and serial abusers when she had worked for the Crown Prosecution Service, and the one thing the victims had all agreed upon was that men with bad intent all smiled or sneered. It was part of their attack, part of breaking down their victim and asserting power.

“You should have listened to us,” Nelson told her. “But no, women like you always know best. Bloody high and mighty with your business suits and your attitude, your ridiculous salaries, always looking down on people… Well, guess what? You’re in a man’s world now, luv, and you’re about to learn that having tits and hips and a big, white smile counts for shit in this world. It’s power and strength that really matters…”

“You’re trapped now, sweet cheeks,” the tattooed man sneered as he stood beside Nelson. “You should have taken the warning…”

“It’s all over now, though. You’re not going anywhere!”

“That goes for the two of you, as well…”

The two men turned and looked uneasily at the black giant. Verity’s look of defeat was suddenly bolstered. She was still breathing heavily, but the look of fear in her eyes had given way to relief. Or at least a little hope.

“Verity, I’ll see you back at your flat,” Big Dave said matter-of-factly.

“It won’t go your way this time,” said Nelson, but he had weighed the situation. This wasn’t going to be easy. He allowed Verity to walk past him and grinned when she paused beside the big Fijian. “That’s right, give him a kiss goodbye, luv…” he goaded her.

Big Dave gave her a wink and waited for her to step out onto the street before taking a step forward. “You two should have learned your lesson the last time.”

“We’ve got a job to do,” said the younger tattooed man.

“When your orders are to intimidate or harm a woman just going about her work, then you’re in the wrong job.” Big Dave stared at both men in turn. “I would give you a chance to avoid getting all fucked up, but I watched the way you chased her down, terrified her, and I can’t think of a single reason why either of you should walk out of here today.”

Nelson grinned as he reached under his jacket and pulled out a large knife with a tanto blade. The shape of the knife was that of a samurai sword and overall must have measured twelve inches, with eight of those inches made up of razor-sharp blade. The younger man followed suit, flicking open a smaller, but no less wicked-looking black tactical fighting knife that locked tight with a loud ‘click’.

“How do you feel now?” Nelson asked, giving the tanto knife a little spin in his hand, the gleaming edge of the polished blade glinting in the sunlight. “Not so confident, eh?”

Big Dave didn’t flinch. He didn’t even so much as look at the knife in his opponent’s hand. “The look on Verity’s face is still on my mind,” he said. “So, I’m going to teach you a lesson…”

For such a big man, he moved quickly. He covered the twenty-feet between them like a hundred-metre sprinter out of the blocks and drove a front kick into Nelson’s stomach. The man slashed wildly in front of him with the blade just before absorbing the kick, but he was two-feet short of his target and took the full force of eighteen angry stone that momentarily rearranged his internal organs and sent him sprawling backwards, dropping the knife and searching desperately for breath that couldn’t find his lungs. As Big Dave’s right foot touched back down, he grabbed the younger man’s right wrist with his right hand, and the man’s neck with his left. His fingers wrapped tightly around the man’s narrow neck and for a moment he was completely restrained and the knife dropped to the ground with a clatter before Big Dave pulled backwards with both arms bracing the man against his chest. The speed and leverage was immense, and several bones audibly snapped and cracked. Keeping the man’s neck in his grip, he released his grip on the man’s wrist, caught hold of his opponent by his testicles and hauled the man into the air and slammed him down on his back on the paved ground. He stamped on the man’s face, a resounding crunch clearly audible as he flattened his opponent’s nose, and he didn’t bother checking that the man would stay down – there was no point wasting his time because he doubted the man would be going anywhere without someone wheeling him in a chair. Big Dave walked up to Nelson, who was attempting to get back to his feet. The man lashed out hopelessly with his right leg, and Big Dave side stepped and stamped on the man’s kneecap, snapping it backwards, then shuffled and sent a football penalty kick into the man’s crotch, feeling his foot give as the man’s pelvis shattered and he passed out from the pain and shock of the sudden, overwhelming injury.

It was all over. Neither man was moving, and Big Dave doubted that they would be in the picture again. He picked up both knives and dumped them in a filthy wheelie bin. When he left the alley, he glanced back at both men. Neither man had moved and as he thought about the desperation in Verity’s eyes, it did not bother him if they ever moved again.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Big Dave walked calmly down the street towards his van. He could deal with a ticket, but a wheel clamp would be a real inconvenience and the clamping companies never sent out a clamper to release the clamp until the payment had been processed, and once that had happened they worked on their own time and not to the vehicle owner’s convenience. He had some tools in the van and might just have to get creative. His breath had finally returned from the exertion, and he did not give the two men another thought. Not only had he taught the men a lesson and taken them out of the picture, but he would have sent a clear message to the director of MI5 and considering how quickly Saunders had infected that fine institution, it felt good to have scored a point against him.

He took out his phone and scrolled through the numbers, selecting four numbers and creating a WhatsApp group chat. No names: he had memorised the numbers. He typed out two words and sent the text to the group. He waited for it to show as ‘sent’ and stared at the two words. BROKEN ARROW.

Big Dave locked the phone and slipped it back in his pocket as he continued on his way. The time had come, and there was nothing else for it.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Zürich

“He’s checked out?”

“Yes.”

“What else did they say at reception…? Oh, forget it…”

Jim Kernow nodded, feeling the man’s frustration. King was a professional; he was hardly going to leave a forwarding address.

Ramsay checked his phone again, checked for text messages, then started to ring the same list of numbers that he had just moments before Jim had returned. “Nothing,” Ramsay said heavily.

“Could Collins have taken everybody off the board?” Kernow asked, almost regretting the question at once for fear of the answer.

Ramsay did not answer the man’s question, but said, “There isn’t so much as a signal in the contact circle…” He paused. “Nothing.”

“What about Flymo?” Jim asked, already knowing the answer.

“Vanished. Just like everybody else.” Ramsay paused, staring blankly at the phone in his hand. “I think we’re done...”

Kernow shook his head. “We’re not done, boss. We’ll do the surveillance as planned.”

“We?”

Kernow shrugged. “If Collins has taken down the team, then he’ll soon be coming after us.” He paused. “With all due respect, you’re a sitting duck on your own.”

“Thanks…” Ramsay replied frostily, but he knew that the man was right. He hadn’t been a physical force before the ‘incident’, and he could put up little resistance now that he was confined to a wheelchair. “Very well,” he said. “You’ll need some protection. Do you have a gun.”

“No.”

“Oh…”

“We’ll be ok, boss,” Kernow replied. “Rule one of surveillance work is don’t get seen.”

“What’s rule two?”

“Don’t break rule one…”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Lucerne, Switzerland

Richard Collins had stopped at a pharmacy for first aid supplies and had left in a hurry because the concerned manager of the pharmacy had become most insistent for him to go to hospital and had even started to call an ambulance, telling him that he should not drive because of the rawness of his eyes. The burns were deep and red and already blistering, his eyebrows and eyelashes had been singed back to the skin, and his nostrils were sore, and his nose hair had singed and all he could smell now was burned hair and skin. His lips were raw and cracked and each time he gently licked his lips to soothe them, they stung at first and made him grimace. More worrying was his left eye, his vision blurred since the flames had enveloped his face and sent him reeling in retreat. Most people would have been horrified, but Collins had been so intrinsically conditioned in his trade that he reasoned that at least it had not been his right eye, because that was his dominant eye and he needed that for aiming a firearm.

He had applied the burn cream, surprised by how painful it had been, and had remained to be for at least ten minutes. The stinging pain soon subsided and had been replaced by the dull ache of the burn. The saline eye drops stung each time he applied them, but it was important to keep his eye moist to prevent scaring if he was to save his vision. To avoid looking conspicuous he had also bought a pair of cheap sunglasses and some Covid-19 style face masks, which were still being displayed for vulnerable people at the beginning of the flu season. The mask irritated him, and the heat made him uncomfortable, but he had decided to persist with it as he booked into a small hotel on the outskirts of the city. He needed to rest-up and treat his burns and regularly apply the eyedrops and alternate the painkillers - the ibuprofen for the inflammation and the paracetamol for the pain. Drinking plenty of water was important, too. He needed rest and some room service, and Lucerne was far enough away to buy him some time.

Collins had stolen a car at the scene of the crash, and again in Kaltbrunn. In another town he stole a set of numberplates from a vehicle registered in Germany because Swiss numberplates could be so easily checked, and the details of the driver and their address was freely available in the public access record. Which was why there was zero road rage in Switzerland.

Collins had reached a metaphorical crossroads. One way led to King and unfinished business. Another way led to the unknown. He couldn’t go back, because that only led to ruin. But he could barely fight the urge to rejoin the fight and go after King, and especially the young man who had disfigured him and put him in so much pain. And then there was the third direction? That would be going after the people behind his last contract. He had not fully achieved the objective, and they wanted retribution. Sending an assassin after him had told him one thing, and one thing only: the balance sheet would remain in debt. He could expect more of the same, and he could not live like that. Before every assignment, Collins did his due diligence. He knew who was behind every contract he took. People would use the middle-men and financiers and bankers, but he always followed the money. And he would take the fight right to their front door. He just had to decide when.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

HM Prison Bronzefield, Surrey

Unlike many of His Majesty’s prisons, HMP Prison Bronzefield had been purpose-built just over twenty years ago, so there were no cold, stark corridors from the Victorian era but it was surprising how much the building had deteriorated already. Patches of damp, plaster peeling from the walls and areas that could only have received one coat of paint at the time of construction. The floors were stained but clean, with a strong smell of bleach which reminded Big Dave of the first time he had visited a public swimming pool when he had first arrived in the UK. The experience had been alien. It had got into his nose and stung his eyes, and not in a healthy way like the sea around Fiji and its relatively high salt content. Now, whenever he smelled bleach, he was reminded of the chlorine stinging his eyes as he had to prove that he could swim fifty metres in full army fatigues is the nearby leisure centre swimming pool in a dull and wet Catterick at the tender age of seventeen.

They followed the two guards down the corridor, the sounds of prison life a distant, muted noise that grew ever louder with every step. The guards showed them into an interview room, then left silently to stand outside with the door open. Verity Harding pulled out a chair, while Big Dave stood at the frosted widow, barred on the outside.

“Sit down, there’s nothing to see,” she said irritably.

It had been a somewhat regrettable frosty atmosphere on the drive to Surrey. After the incident in the alleyway, Big Dave had checked on Verity back at her apartment, but she had not invited him inside. Grateful that he had been there, the situation had become too much for her. Her chambers were concerned about the involvement of MI5 and the dangers in taking on such a case, and her chambers clerk was meeting with the partners to decide whether they would continue with the representation of Verity Harding’s client. Big Dave had insisted that she allow him to accompany her on her visit as, if the partners decided against continuing with the case, it could well be her last visit and without being a part of her legal team then visitation would be restricted. Visitation was set at three, one-hour visits per week if on remand, and only one visit every two weeks if convicted. He wanted to be there to support Caroline while he still had the chance of unlimited access. Verity had agreed for him to accompany her a second time because even she wasn’t sure if her chambers would continue with the case reassigned to another silk or pull out altogether. Either way, she knew that she owed him that much.

The big Fijian pulled out a chair and glanced at his watch. He guessed that prison guards worked on ‘prison time’, too. It is said that you don’t need a watch in prison even if you were allowed one, because the warden and guards control every element of your life, and you don’t have to be anywhere on time. A door or gate unlocked somewhere, and two sets of footsteps were audible on the hard floor. He estimated that they had covered forty metres before one of the female guards stepped out of the way and Caroline appeared with a male guard escorting her. She was ushered inside, and the male guard took up position outside, and the two female guards sauntered off without any haste. Caroline forced a smile as she sat down. Big Dave reached across the table and gripped her hand, giving it a squeeze to show his support. Her smile warmed, but she withdrew her hand.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

“As well as can be expected,” she replied. “My cellmate tried to kill me and now it looks like my legal team have baulked on my defence…”

“It’s not quite like that,” Verity Harding said defensively. “But you’re not the only one who has had their life threatened. Two of your dogs chased me into an alleyway and as good as said that was it for me…”

“You seem to have come out of it unscathed,” Caroline replied frostily.

“No, she’s right,” Big Dave said quietly. “They meant it, and they had knives. I was lucky enough to catch up with them in time.”

“Oh…” Caroline shrugged. “Then I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Verity reassured her.

“They’re not my dogs, though. The Security Service that you’ve been dealing with isn’t the same service that I recognise.”

“Me neither,” Big Dave agreed. “We haven’t worked directly under them for a while. We’re a small unit and Ramsay is our boss, and it looks like the service has turned into something very different under Director Saunders.”

Caroline nodded in agreement, then said heavily, “But now I must face facts. They are going to get to me in here eventually in here. And losing my legal defence will keep me inside even longer.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Big Dave, looking again at his watch. “So, we’ve made some plans…”

“We have?” Verity Harding frowned. “I’d certainly like to hear more about that,” she scoffed. “As Caroline’s barrister I can assure you that the chambers’ stand on the case is very much divided and will be voted on tomorrow.”

Big Dave ignored her, checked his watch for the third time in as many minutes and said, “Broken Arrow…”

Caroline stood up quickly, her chair tipping backwards. Legal meetings often went poorly, and the guard saw his cue and walked into the room to escort another angry prisoner back to her cell.

“What’s going on?” Verity asked, looking between Big Dave and her client.

Caroline stepped up to the guard ready for him to escort her, but she grabbed both his lapels, pivoted her hip and threw him clean over her shoulder and onto the floor. Big Dave slammed his fist into the man’s face and put his lights out.

“Oh Jesus Christ!” Verity exclaimed. “What the hell are you doing?”

Big Dave unclipped the keys and handcuffs from the man’s belt, secured his wrists behind his back, then rolled him onto his front to prevent him from choking. He looked back at Verity and said, “They aren’t playing by the rules.” He paused as Caroline took the keys from him and stood by the open door. “So, if Caroline is going to get through this, then we can’t play by the rules, either.”

“She’ll be a fugitive!”

“I’ve been in worse situations than that,” Caroline replied sardonically. “I’ll settle your account when I get a moment…”

Big Dave checked his watch. “Three minutes, we’ve got to get going!”

Caroline led the way without looking back at the barrister. Broken Arrow was the term reserved for extreme action, and when Big Dave and said the words, she knew that getting out of the prison was the only course of action. They were in the second building. Big Dave and Verity had passed through the reception block and crossed the service carpark to enter the second building inside the prison grounds. Beyond this building - which housed the visitor centre, infirmary, offices, canteen and low risk prisoners - four buildings in the shape of crosses made up the various cellblocks and between the second block and the four cellblocks, a square garden with four triangles of grass separated by a cross of pathed pathways was designated the outside space for the inmates.

Caroline unlocked the first gate and was met by a female guard who looked to have been day-dreaming while having a crafty vape. She had not realised that a prisoner was on their own or that they had keys with them until it was too late. Caroline sprinted a few steps, dropped onto her side and kicked below the woman’s knees, taking her clean off her feet. The guard fell, letting out a scream which was cut short by Caroline’s elbow driving down into her jaw. As Caroline got back onto her feet, Big Dave rolled the woman over onto her front, saving her from gagging on blood. They jogged down the corridor and Caroline readied the keys for the next gate. Once unlocked, Caroline led the way down a stairwell, where two male officers were joking about something as they climbed the stairs side-by-side. Big Dave pushed past Caroline as he ran down the stairs, gripped onto both banister rails and kicked out both his feet, planting each of his size thirteens into the centre of each man’s chest. The two men sprawled backwards and down the six or seven steps remaining onto the concrete landing. One of the men hit his head on the unforgiving concrete wall and was knocked out. The other man was knocked out when he struggled to get up, as Big Dave brought the edge of his hand down like a knife edge to the side of his neck. The big Fijian had made mistakes in the past, so he gave the man about twenty percent of his strength, but it proved more than enough. The hard edge of his hand and speed and power, and the configuration of nerves and the carotid artery had sent a surge of blood to the brain and immediately starved the brain of it, and unconsciousness followed.

Big Dave checked his watch again as he took the next flight of stairs. “One minute, keep going!”

An alarm sounded and in the confines of the stairwell, they could hear a metallic drone as electronic security locks drove home.

“We’re trapped!” Caroline shouted above the alarm. “The electronic locks will override the external door!”

Big Dave ran ahead of her taking two steps at a time. She started to follow, then paused at a wire mesh window on her left as a reverberation hummed over the alarm and a shadow cast over the stairwell. The belly of a helicopter momentarily filled the window as the aircraft flew out from the building, hovering over the garden. Two ropes spilled out of the open doors and two masked figures clad in black tactical gear fast-roped down to the ground using only gloves to slow their descent. The ropes immediately detached as the helicopter climbed and flew out of sight over the adjacent building.

“Caroline! Move your arse!” Big Dave hollered up the stairwell. “Now!”

She watched the two figures run across the grass and out of view, then snapping to her senses she followed Big Dave down to the bottom of the stairwell. The concussive blast of an explosion thumped hard in their chests, followed by acrid smoke and the stench of burned fuel and plastic. They rounded the stairwell to see smoke dispersing and the thick, steel door hanging on its hinges, the metal frame warped and steaming from the intense heat of the explosion. The two black-clad figures stood either side of the doorway, both armed with 9mm pistols. One man aimed his weapon outside covering their rear, the other lifted his mask, but Caroline already recognised King’s frame and ran over to him, hugging him tightly as he lifted her briefly off the ground and hugged her close.

The helicopter thundered back overhead and descended in a hover until it touched its wheels on the grass. Prison guards stepped out of the cross-shaped cellblocks, walkie-talkies in hand. Tiny explosions of bright orange flame struck the ground near the guards’ feet and plumes of soil and rock spewed high into the air, the guards leapt and dived for cover and two seconds later a series of gunshots cracked in the distance. More incendiary rounds struck near their feet and the guards sprinted back inside the cellblocks.

King shepherded Caroline onboard and Big Dave clambered inside and squeezed his bulk into the tiny seat. The second blacked-out figure climbed into the cockpit beside Flymo and as the helicopter took off Jack Luger turned around in his seat, removed his mask and pulled on his headset as he winked at Caroline. They flew approximately one-thousand metres northwest over Shortwood Common to a large apartment block, where, on the roof waiting with a rifle already packed away inside a padded gun-slip, a third black-clad figure waited patiently. Flymo brought the aircraft into a hover and the man ducked down as he crept along the roofline and clambered inside. It was a tight squeeze, but he clambered in, and King took the rifle off him as he buckled up. Rashid removed his face mask and grinned at Caroline as he put on his headset.

Operation Broken Arrow was no complete.

Chapter Forty

Bern, Switzerland

Jim Kernow had lost count of the surveillance operations that he had been involved in when he had served as a police officer in The Met. Criminals, organised crime gangs, terrorists, sex traffickers and paedophile rings – he had watched them all. He had been a part of successes, and he had shouldered the failures. There was no playbook for surveillance. Just one mistake, and weeks or even months of work could be wasted in a heartbeat. It only took one person to be seen – or worse be seen twice – and everything changed.

The drone had been invaluable, and he had studied the video images taken from over a thousand feet above the facility and compared them to the images he had taken from Google Earth for reference. There had been many changes to consider, new paved paths and walkways, new service roads and even an additional building. Kernow had used a powerful telephoto lens to zoom in on the buildings, but AJB Suisse used a lot of smoked glass and electronic shutters, but the shutters meant that there was something inside that warranted protecting.

They had rented a campervan because campervans could park on alpine roads without looking conspicuous, as tourists and weekend users alike parked to take in the view, or stop for refreshments, with some campers often staying overnight. It also provided them with a base in which they could work and sleep and thus negate travelling to and from the hotel and being vulnerable getting to and from the car. Ramsay had turned the compact dining table into his office and was running two laptops connected to the internet via a military-grade satellite, that Jim had affixed to the roof and connected through a wireless router. He scrutinised the video footage from the drone, and the stills that Jim had taken with his camera. Ramsay had found the facility’s planning records online and was using an architectural design programme to determine flaws in the building’s construction and security weaknesses in the facility’s layout. However, as much as they collated the data, they still could not get around the fact that even if they had the surveillance covered, they were in no position to infiltrate a highly protected pharmaceutical facility and upload a combative virus to the system mainframe. Ramsay was under no illusion that being wheelchair bound meant that he could not do anything other than remain in a communication role in the campervan. He could operate the surveillance drone and relay information to Jim, but realistically, Jim Kernow was a retired police officer in his late fifties. He was a tough and resourceful character, but he was by no means a field agent and never had been. Ramsay had resisted the temptation to call Arthur Wilber-Scott and tell him that he had lost contact with his assets, as the call would likely end his career, and Ramsay could not bear the thought of rotting at home. He had little in common with his wife anymore and his daughters had reached an age where parents were an embarrassment, and both had little time for him. Worse of all were the looks of sympathy they wore when he was with them. He could handle empathy – in fact a little of that would have gone a long way – but sympathy revolted him. When Charlotte had been killed, he had lost his only friend, the only person who truly understood him. He realised that Charlotte had wanted more, but he doubted that he would ever have broken his marriage vows – he never had been one to break a promise, and to him truth, honesty and integrity meant everything - but he could not imagine ever being as happy again as when he had talked over data and shared a plate of Jammie Dodgers with Charlotte.

Jim Kernow took the kettle off the boil and poured two mugs of tea. He handed Ramsay his and put the tin of biscuits beside the laptop he was working on. They were Swiss biscuits and basically just puff pastry sprinkled with copious quantities of granulated sugar. Not really a biscuit at all, which was probably why the tin was still reasonably full after two days of surveillance.

“We’ve got company,” said Jim, looking out of the rear window.

Ramsay tried to wheel himself around, but the wheels caught against the table, and he muttered something under his breath which was as close as the man usually ever came to profanity. “Police?”

“No. Two cars. New, white, most likely hire cars. Probably tourists after a photograph.”

“Of a pharmaceutical facility?”

“Well, if you look the other way, boss, it’s an exceptional view of the mountain, valley and lake below. Rather beautiful, in fact.”

“Oh. I can’t say I noticed.”

Jim smiled. “I’ll fill the kettle and get another brew on.”

“I haven’t touched this one yet,” Ramsay replied tersely. “And throw those damned biscuits out. They’re not biscuits at all. Hasn’t Switzerland heard of Jammie Dodgers, Hobnobs or Custard Cream?”

“I think they’ll all be gone in a minute, boss,” he replied, then walked to the door as three loud knocks rapped on the side of the campervan.

Kernow opened the door and Big Dave stepped inside. He had to turn sideways for the door and crouch completely for the ceiling. “This is cosey…” he remarked, standing upright when he positioned himself under the raised ceiling vent.

Ramsay frowned as Rashid struggled for a place to stand with Big Dave filling the living space. “What on earth…?”

King poked his head in and said, “We took ourselves off your tracking app, but you and Jim are still on it. Not great security if you ask me…”

“Well, I didn’t. Where the hell have you all been?”

“They paid me a visit,” Caroline said lightly as she squeezed in under King’s arm. “And it was most welcome…”

“Oh my God!” Ramsay stared at her, wide-eyed and incredulous.

“It would have been nice to see you, Neil,” she said edgily, then chided, “Not even so much as a cake with a hacksaw blade baked inside it…”

“You’re a fugitive now,” he said pointedly.

“I’m a live fugitive, which is better than a dead prisoner. I’ll take that any day of the week.”

“Where are Leroy and Jack?” he asked indignantly.

“Flymo is fetching the helicopter,” said King. “And Luger is gathering the equipment we will need, including some weapons.”

“The guards at the facility are equipped with batons, pepper spray and tasers.” Ramsay paused. “I don’t want a bloodbath down there.”

“He’s looking at some non-lethal options as well.”

“As well?”

King shrugged. “Collins is still out there. Luger and I hid our pistols here before travelling back to England, so we’re good. But we need a protection for the rest of the team.”

“And what about Collins?” Ramsay asked sombrely. “If he’s still out there, then we’re all at risk.”

“I got the call that Caroline needed help,” said King. “I figured he could keep for a while. Besides, Luger got him pretty good. Should keep him pre-occupied.”

Caroline rested her head on King’s shoulder and wrapped an arm around his waist. “All for one,” she said. “We’ll deal with the AJB Suisse thing, and then we’ll all go after Collins…”

“And what about your status as a fugitive?” Ramsay asked incredulously.

“As I said, all for one.” She paused. “The charges against me, as an active service Security Service officer, are bogus. If I was a police officer in the same scenario then I would have been investigated and subsequently cleared. This is all about shutting down your unit and giving the Prime Minister more control over an organisation that should be free of political agenda and oversight. You need to pull some strings with this new department you’re working for and put the PM back in his box.”

Jim Kernow laughed. “I’ve missed you, Caroline. You say it like it is.” He handed round mugs of tea and noticed that the biscuit tin was already half-empty, Big Dave chewing with his mouth full, and a biscuit in both hands. “Missed you all, in fact. It’s been a bit a bit quite lately.”

“None taken…” Ramsay muttered.

“What’s the state of play?” King asked, easing the tension. “I see you have a satellite link and have been running a drone…” He nodded towards the controller on the work surface. “What about cameras?”

“Theirs?”

“No, ours. Do you have anything planted near the facility?”

“No.”

“Ok, Rahisid and I will get onto that,” said King. Solar-powered, wireless connections work best. There are plenty of elevated positions where we can set them up.” He paused. “I’m thinking about a test of their security as well.” He looked down at Caroline. “Maybe a freelance journalist or a nature photographer getting too close to the fence.”

“Sounds right up my street,” she grinned. “God, it’s good to be out of that damned place…”

“Well, just see that you don’t end up inside a Swiss prison,” Rashid chided from the doorway, the camper now far too crowded to get inside.

“I bet the Swiss prisons have chocolate, though,” she smiled.

Chapter Forty-One

Richard Collins did not like what he saw. And there was nothing he could do about it. He stared harder at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He had been lucky not to have been blinded by the searing, acrid flame. The blistering had eased, but the skin was so tender that he had barely been able to sleep for waking in extreme pain when he had rolled over and his face had scraped the pillow. He had applied copious quantities of burn cream, but he had not been able to shave, and the stubble was annoying him, and when he subconsciously itched or rubbed his face, he was painfully reminded of how raw the skin and blisters were underneath.

Collins stalked out into the bedroom and opened the laptop he had purchased the previous afternoon and sat down at the dresser to start work. He was connected through The Onion Router, or TOR, to the hotel’s Wi-Fi which gave him browser anonymity because of the way the platform connected via bridges in other countries. He was now trawling the news sites and various government websites, as well as the websites for the political parties of Labour, Reform, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats, and the American Republican and Democrat home pages. Switzerland was the key – all he had to do was find a link. King was here to kill him, but what about the others? No, they were not assassins, no matter how well-trained they were, or what former lives they had lived. They were here for a reason, and if he knew the reason, then he could try and locate them and he could kill the man who had disfigured him, or anybody else in the team. He may even catch up with King himself. Collins scrolled and clicked and went down the rabbit hole that was the internet. All he needed was a connection between government intelligence officers being in Switzerland. It was worth at least one last try before he went to ground.

There was a private security conference in Geneva, a post-Brexit deal to import Jaguar-Land Rover cars below current EU tariffs currently underway in Basel, a Scotch whisky expo in Bern next week and an Interpol cyber security conference in Zürich next month. Nothing that MI5 would take an interest in, apart from the Interpol conference, and the timeline did not fit. There would be a security advance party in the leading days to the conference, but that would not require a specialist unit with the remit King and his colleagues had. No, they were here for something else.

Collins scrolled through the BBC News and Sky News websites, then looked at CNN and Fox News for an American angle. The optics were not only blurred between the two news agencies but poles apart. The UK and European news sites sang more or less from the same hymn sheet, but the American news read like fiction. Collins smiled as he thought about the Russian agent he had once been sent to kill in Kiev, long before Ukraine had been savaged by war and the annexing of Crimea and The Donbas that had led to it. The Russian had talked first. Collins had a real skill for making that happen before he killed a mark. The agent had repeated Khruschev’s immortal words that they would take America without firing a shot, that they would destroy the country from within. Peter Stewart had dismissed the man’s claims as barely conscious drivel. People talked to save their lives. Sometimes the only way to shut them up was for you to give them the bullet that they were so desperate to avoid. But, as Collins scoured the various news sites and political party webpages, it would have appeared to have come partially true. At least the first wave had succeeded in dividing. All that was left to do was conquer.

The President’s investments and business dealings while in office featured heavily in the narrative on the CNN website, while Fox News seemed to think that the man was doing the US population a great service by acting as inspiration for the American Dream. After all, if Joe Public invested their hard-earned money following the President’s lead, then they too would become rich. These companies benefited from having their profile raised, and with the President backing them, then there was no better time to expand and develop and take advantage of having all the red tape cut at a presidential level. Collins scrolled and wondered how this would have played out in other countries. He had instigated coups on the African Continent for far less, and he suspected the French would dust off a guillotine and haul it through the streets of Paris, while the British might even need an extra cup of tea and write a sternly worded letter.

Collins paused over a paragraph about US pharmaceutical giant Merrick & Webb and their major stakeholders – the President of the United States and at least four others in his administration. He had seen the name of the company before. But not just on the shelves of pharmacies. He opened the tab to the Sky News website where he found a report of an earlier report of the pending NHS deal with Swiss pharmaceutical company AJB Suisse. The UK Prime Minister had been quick to downplay speculation of a merger between Merrick & Webb and AJB Suisse. The US President had shut it down as fake news. However, his portfolio showed heavy purchases of AJB Suisse stock, which if merged, could be written off as a tax loss, especially is AJB Suisse ceased to trade. Collins frowned. If the merger went ahead, then the NHS would be in the hands of an American company, and the grifter that was the American President. Collins looked up AJB Suisse and sighed as he leaned back in the chair and stared at the screen. The scenario started to come to him, and with that the semblance of a plan if he were in King’s position. He had spent his life planning and executing operations and the key to that was to see all the angles. King and his team were here for something concerning AJB Suisse. The deadline for the deal with the UK and the NHS was imminent, so if something was going to be done to halt it, then the times was now. The news sites had printed various stories about the benefits of the low pricing of drugs and other products that the NHS had negotiated terms for, and the deal was hailed as the best thing for the NHS for decades. But what if it was just about money for shareholders? Who better to control a deal between Britain and a Swiss company than the British Prime Minister? And who better to make billions from a merger and total US control than the President of the United States? As Collins considered the scenarios, things began to add up. If he was merely speculating, it wouldn’t matter. He needed to disappear soon anyway. But if he was right, then he’d find King or the man who had burned his face near the AJB Suisse facility in Bern.

Chapter Forty-Two

If there was one thing the Swiss did better than any other nation apart from fine watches, quality chocolate, cuckoo clocks and relaxed gun ownership without the mass shootings to go with it, it was security equipment. Some of it was made in Switzerland, most of it wasn’t, but everything it was possible to think of in the world of security was available over the counter and without any checks, registration or licencing.

Under the cover of darkness and wearing camouflaged fatigues with a lining of silver thermal lining to go undetected by thermal imaging devices, King and Rashid had set the cameras at various points above the facility and close to the fence. Always ready for the plan to rapidly deteriorate to Plan B, King had also planted some ‘options’ to use in the event of a full-scale failure. His old mentor Peter Stewart had taught him the three principles of ‘Murphy’s Law’ almost as soon as he had been recruited to the shadowy unit operating under the umbrella of MI6. The principles were quite simple: Nothing is as easy as it looks, everything takes longer than you think, and anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

King maintained realistic expectations for every operation, focusing on backup plans in case Plan A failed. A lifetime of mistakes, unrealistic goals and working against the odds had taught him that Plan A was the shiny package you delivered to the top brass to get the operation signed off. Plan C was often the more realistic outcome.

Jim and Ramsay had taken photographs and video of every inch of the AJB Suisse facility using the drone, and now that the cameras were in place, each playing back on a separate feed that Ramsay now monitored on his two laptops, the team had taken up positions for what was to be their initial probe into the facility.

Caroline had parked her hired Mercedes A Class AMG further down the mountain road that separated AJB Suisse from the stunning lake in the valley below. It wasn’t strictly a private access road because there were three shepherd’s huts on the mountain that had attained historical importance and natural beauty status within the canton, but so far as the team could see, the road had only been unused by the facility personnel for almost twenty-four hours. King had reasoned that this was likely because a series of foot trails started out from the lake car park and one led to the shepherd’s huts, so would be the natural starting point for a hike. The road was a single lane of tarmac with passing points cut into the mountainside every fifty metres or so and wide enough for haulage vehicles to access, even in the snows of winter, which would be easily cleared this far down the mountain and near to town. A mile from the facility, the lake offered casual parking for up to twenty vehicles with strict fines posted for overnight camping or motorised water sports. The autumnal air had put off all but a few hardened stand-up paddleboarders and canoeists, and the lake was cold and dark blue fading to black in the depths. Soon, the lake would be frozen for the winter months and visitors would be few in the area because the ski resorts were located at the top of the mountain and deeper into the Alps.

Caroline had enjoyed the drive on the twisty road in the sporty Mercedes, which she supposed would be classed as a ‘hot hatch’. She would like to have driven the road in her Mini Cooper S but would have to admit that the small Mercedes had done a sterling job of her spirited drive. She had taken out the binoculars and digital camera for her cover. Rashid had used a similar cover in Northern Russia and had downloaded some photographs of Bearded Vultures to her camera while she had hit the digital ornithology books for a couple of hours to become a potted expert on the Bearded Vulture, or Lamb’s Eagle as it was known across the Alpine range. Any inspection of her camera would show carefully edited photographs of the bird in question without watermarks or time and date stamps. Something that had stood up under the scrutiny of the Russian military and GRU while Rashid had been working undercover with Arctic Survey scientists.

She kept to a path that ran parallel with the road, using her binoculars to scour the ridge above her. She could not see King or Rashid, who she was informed would be watching to see the reaction of the security at the facility, but then again, she did not expect to. Both men were experts in camouflage and concealment, and if she could spot them, then it would be time for them to retire. The thought of retirement evoked memories of sailing around the Mediterranean and African coast with King. Warm days, cosy nights, swimming and fishing, the pace of life and days spent as if in a delicious day-dream. But it had been a double-edged sword. They were both people of action, and they had a past. Their past had caught up with them, and they had found themselves pulled back into the shady world of espionage and national security. Perhaps their ‘retirement’ had been exactly what they had needed – a brief break in which to recover and re-evaluate. A taste of what awaited them if they both made it that far. But not yet. Not today. Today was about serving their country and the personal sacrifices that came along with that.

There was nothing regarding the fence that Caroline could see that they had not already discovered by using the cameras or drone footage, but nevertheless she noted that it was at least three metres high with the last few rungs of razor wire canted outwards at forty-five-degrees, making it and impossible climb. Or at least, impossible without ladders, leather or Kevlar sheets to avoid being cut and at least three people to make it happen. Concrete posts secured the wire panels, and on every third panel of wire – she estimated that each panel was four metres wide - she noted a small, yellow sign written in bold red letters in both French and English, warning of electrification. That would make matters even trickier. She thought that all they needed now were trembler devices and the job would be impossible… and then she saw them. Powered by the electrical current and spaced every hundred feet or so.

Caroline raised the binoculars and watched the ridgeline to engage with her cover of being an ornithologist. She lowered them slowly and studied the back row of buildings. There were CCTV cameras on poles all throughout the facility. This was going to be a tough one, she thought.

She was aware of a gravelly sound and realised that the security team had been dispatched in an electric SUV. She did not recognise the make or model, but it had that futuristic boxy look of many Chinese EVs and looked utterly imposing, given that it had driven right up behind her with no sound but for the few chips of gravel and dirt that had spun up under braking.

“What are you doing here?” a man shouted as he got out of the driver’s seat. He had spoken only in English, which she thought strange. “This is private property!”

Caroline watched as both rear doors opened, and two more men got out. They were dressed more like military or police tactical units with black high-top army boots, black combat-style cargoes and black bomber jackets. They all wore utility belts with handcuffs, batons, two-way radio handsets, pepper spray and tasers, and she would have to admit being thoroughly intimidated by both their appearance and demeanour.

“I’m a free-lance nature photographer and journalist,” she replied.

“There’s nothing here but mountain goats and crows…” the man sneered at her.

“On the contrary,” she smiled. “There are many marmots in these mountains. You may have seen them, they’re a huge rodent, and food for the subject of my studies, the Bearded Vulture. One has been spotted in these parts after almost forty years, and I am desperately hoping to spot a mating pair. The species was hunted to extinction in the Alps by the early twentieth century because of its diet of mainly lambs, sheep and goats.” She paused. “Like the shepherds who would have lived in those historical interest huts…” She pointed to the ridge. “Farmers and shepherds wiped out the Bearded Vulture. Hunted it mercilessly.”

“Farmers work in shit all day,” the man replied. “And that’s all I’m smelling now… bullshit…”

“I have no reason to lie!” she protested indignantly. “The species was reintroduced to Switzerland as part of an international conservation program. The reintroduction effort began in nineteen-ninety-one, with the first breeding pair successfully raising a wild chick in Switzerland in two-thousand and seven. I have been doing extensive work with the Pro Bartgeier Foundation to study and raise awareness of the Bearded Vulture, or Lamb Eagle, as it was unfairly called for generations, along with not being of the correct genus.”

“I’m still smelling bullshit,” the man replied. “You’re coming with us…”

“Like hell, I am!” she protested. “You do not have the power of arrest! And anyway, on what charge?”

“Oh, we’ll think of something…” The man cocked his head at the guards, and they walked around her in a pincer movement. With the man doing all the talking in front of her, and the electric fence boasting 40,000 volts behind her, she was surrounded.

“This is private land!” she objected. “Don’t you dare lay a finger on me…”

“You were seen observing the facility.”

“If you don’t want people looking at your precious facility, then you need a wall, not a bloody wire fence!”

The passenger door of the EV opened and a man wearing a sharp business suit stepped out. He had jet black hair slicked back to his scalp with a generous amount of hair product and his nose looked as hawk-like as the damned vulture she was professing to know all about. Caroline could see from the way the security men bristled that the man was clearly in charge, but what’s more, to be feared. She watched as he stood beside the man who had done all the talking, who then instinctively stepped backwards a pace.

“We do highly specialist work here. I would suggest you turn around, get into the Mercedes that you hired in Zürich at the Hertz office, and drive away while you can…”

“That sounds awfully like a threat, Mr…”

“Let’s not take this pretence any further. You and I both know that despite whatever idiotic cover story you have told my colleagues here... and I’m assuming by your equipment that it’s ornithology or the study of climate change or glacial erosion, or some such bullshit… you are, in fact, either an industrial spy for one of our competitors, a spy for a foreign government intelligence agency, or a journalist who has waded dangerously out of their depth.” He paused, casually unbuttoning his suit jacket and allowing the garment to fall open, revealing a holstered Sig P226 9mm pistol. Caroline knew the weapon well. A true professional’s choice. Like a builder’s favourite 16oz claw hammer or a chef’s ten-inch cook’s knife. Nothing fancy, but utterly perfect for what it was designed to do. “This is a quiet valley,” he said coldly, then nodded his head down the valley and added, “And that, is a very deep lake…”

“I don’t take well to be threatened,” she replied coldly.

“Hand over your camera, please.”

“Go to hell.”

The two men either side of her closed in and she had to steel her resolve to remain calm. Somewhere up on the two mountainsides, both King and Rashid would be watching. One of the men snatched her camera from her and handed it to the man in the suit.

The man studied the screen and scrolled through the photographs, remaining utterly impassive. When he had finished, he held it out for Caroline, but as she reached for it, he slammed it down on the rocks at his feet and it smashed into pieces, the telephoto lens smashing and ripping out of its bayonetted fitting. “Whoopsie…” he said with a smirk on his lips. “This is hard ground. A slip of fall could smash someone’s skull just as easily…”

“You’d better be careful, then…” The men turned around, and Caroline’s spirits lifted as King stepped down from the last boulders on the slope and onto the track with a pair of powerful field glasses in his hand, holding them by the strap. “There you are…” he said to Caroline.

“Your accomplice?” the man in the suit asked.

“My colleague,” she corrected him.

King walked up to them, forcing the security guard and the man in the suit to stand broadside on to look at them both.

The man grinned and made a show of turning so that King could see the gun in the holster, but he was not ready for what happened next. King kicked up gravel into the men’s faces, swung the field glasses like a mace, and as the heavy lenses cracked the man in the face, he leapt in and snatched the pistol from the man’s holster and shoved him to the ground.

“No!” King shouted at the guards, who were reaching for their tasers. “Touch them and I’ll drill you a third eye socket…” He stepped back a pace, the gun moving between all three men. The man in the suit was out-cold and bleeding from his mouth and nose. “Lose the belts,” he ordered them calmly.

“You can’t cover all of us…” one of the guards said through gritted teeth.

King shot the man through his right kneecap, and he dropped like a stone, screaming and writhing on the ground. “No, you’re right.” King paused, the weapon moving between the two remaining guards. “Anybody else got any more advice for me?”

Both men shook their heads and unbuckled their utility belts as if they were on fire. King picked up the belts and threw them over the fence. He ordered the two guards to do the same with their wounded colleague’s belt, then nodded for Caroline to follow him and they took the EV down the track back to where Caroline had parked her hire car.

“That was tense,” she said quietly.

“And an extreme over reaction on their part,” said King.

“We’ve just lost the element of surprise as well.”

“Maybe,” he replied.

“Definitely,” she argued. “I could have gotten out of that back there.”

King shrugged. “It wasn’t looking good from where I was watching.”

“It wasn’t over,” she replied indignantly.

“I’ve just got you back,” said King, glancing at her and giving her a subtle wink, his usually cold, grey-blue eyes glistening in the light and giving him a rare air of kindness and warmth. “I was damned if I was going to see you locked up again…”

Caroline scoffed. “Nice try…” But she couldn’t resist and smiled back at him a little coyly all the same. “Ok, I do appreciate you coming to help me,” she said. “But I have a feeling that being detained was the last thing on their mind. Remind me to tip off the Swiss police about that lake. I imagine there’s a whole host of things they’d find down there.” She paused. “I don’t get it, though. AJB Suisse is a legitimate, billion-dollar company…”

“Really?” King chuckled. “Legitimate, yes. They employ people and pay taxes. But ethical? Hell, no. The same goes for most of the stock trading top one-hundred companies. You don’t get to be at the top of the financial list by being nice.” He paused, parking alongside the Mercedes. “And big-pharma is right up there with arms manufacturers in terms of ethics.”

“So, how are we going to get into that place and complete our objective?” she asked as they got out.

King weighed the keys of the Chinese EV in his hand, then shrugged before throwing them into the lake. “I think subtlety is out of the equation, now…”

“Oh, god,” Caroline shook her head. “I don’t like the sound of that…”

Chapter Forty-Three

He brought the binoculars to his eyes and winced as the rubber eyepieces touched the raw skin. Just the fleeting stab of pain made him wish he could kill the young man who had done this to him. And he still may get his chance.

Collins watched from his vantage point. He could see the woman from MI5 in the valley below, and he could see the parked car and campervan parked in the layby high above the AJB Suisse research and development facility in the valley below. The last he heard she had been locked up in Bronzefield Prison, and he hadn’t seen anything online about her being bailed or released. She had killed Habib, the banker behind his last contract, and as far as he was concerned, she had saved him the task of doing it himself. There were still two men left in the chain, and he would have to kill them both if he was ever to lay low without constantly looking over his shoulder. He watched as the security personnel surrounded her, and he couldn’t help feeling amused to watch their operation start to go off the rails. He could drive down the switchback road now, put a bullet inside the men on surveillance duty in the campervan and she would be none the wiser. He could then drive down to the lake and put a bullet in her head. That would be something for King to think about. He returned his field of view to the valley floor and his heart raced as he saw King stepping down over the boulders. Damn it! he thought. The bloody man had been there all along. Collins was reminded of King’s skills. The man had emerged from the landscape like a deer in the early morning mist. He watched the scene play out before him, and he heard the gunshot echo throughout the valley five seconds after he had watched the man go down and writhe on the ground. Then, lining all his ducks in a row, he spotted movement at the campervan, and he zoomed in on the man getting out after the sound of the gunshot and focus his binoculars on the valley below. The bastard who had scorched his face with the improvised flamethrower. It wasn’t going to get any better than this.

Collins looked at the pistol on the seat beside him. He had a full, fifteen round magazine and three loose rounds in his pocket. He had the element of surprise and reasoned that he could take out the men in the campervan. But King and the trigger-happy bitch in the valley below? He wasn’t so sure. He knew that King was armed from the earlier skirmish at the crash scene, and he had taken the security guard’s weapon. That did not give Collins the odds he preferred. As he liked to say, the maths wasn’t mathing… Still, he could get even with the young man at the campervan, and he could blow their surveillance operation all to hell before he took off to fight another day.

Chapter Forty-Four

“It didn’t go well down there,” said Luger as he climbed back into the campervan.

“You can say that again,” replied Jim, his eyes still on the built-in monitor of the drone controller. He had been set the drone into a hover over a thousand feet above the facility and the video was playing on one of Ramsay’s laptops. “They’re clear of it now, though. They’ve taken the security guards’ vehicle back to the lake.”

“A bloody debacle…” Ramsay said quietly.

“They’ll be ready for us now,” said Luger as he switched on the kettle. “There will be little to no chance of stealthily getting into that place and uploading the programme.”

“This is not the time to state the bloody obvious,” Ramsay said curtly.

Luger shared a look with Jim Kernow, who rolled his eyes in response. Working with Ramsay was bad enough sometimes, but working in the confines of a three-birth campervan was pushing it. “I’m getting some air, Jim. Can you finish making the teas?”

“You’ve just had some air,” Ramsay commented without lifting his eyes from the screen.

“You’re alright, kid,” Jim replied getting up. He had set the drone into a pre-programmed circuit of the facility’s perimeter, although there was very little that they could discover now that they did not already know. A debrief with Caroline, King and Rashid would only do that now. “Are you on coffee or tea,” he asked.

“Coffee, please,” Luger replied and opened the door, his head already ducked for the doorway as one soon learned in a campervan. The gunshots were deafening, and Luger slumped in the doorway.

Kernow froze momentarily, taking in the young man bleeding heavily in the doorway and Richard Collins aiming the pistol down at Luger’s head. “No!” he hollered and instinctively swiped the kettle towards him. The kettle left its base unit and struck Collins in the chest, spilling boiling water upwards out of its spout and through the lid which had detached upon impact. Collins screamed as boiling water scalded his raw skin and blisters. Kernow bent down and pulled the Browning 9mm out from Luger’s waistband and took aim at Collins, but the man was already reeling from the boiling water and had turned it into his retreat, the pistol outstretched and firing continuously at the doorway. Kernow managed a few shots but torn between aiming and returning fire at a retreating Collins and protecting Ramsay, the diplomatic protection training kicked in, and he dived on top of Ramsay and shielded him as he adjusted his aim and fired through the window at Collins, who was now running up the road to where he had parked his vehicle.

Kernow quickly turned his attention to Luger and started to check him over, then turned to Ramsay, the colour that had only just been prevalent from both exertion and adrenalin draining coldly from his face. “Call Flymo! Now!” he barked urgently. “If he’s got that helicopter sorted, then we bloody well need it now!”

Chapter Forty-Five

Caroline took the hairpin bends with confidence and an almost sensual pleasure. King smiled as he watched her change up through the gears for the next bend, her expression set with concentration and just the merest smile at the corners of her mouth.

“You should have been a racing driver,” he said as he braced himself for the next corner.

“I do wish you’d stop braking with your right foot,” she said. “You’ll have your feet through the floor like the Flintstones in a minute…”

“Well, perhaps if you didn’t brake so late?”

“That’s where all the fun is found,” she replied. “That, and through the apex when you can lay down the power.”

“You really should have been a racing driver…”

“Watch out!” she screamed at the driver as the oncoming car crossed briefly into their path and barely escaped a head-on collision by scraping down the length of their wing. “Bloody hell!” she added as the scraping of metal sounded as drastic as it always did. She hit the brakes and steered into the side of the road to park.

King said nothing as he dipped his head to see out of the right wingmirror. Caroline’s mirror was long gone. “They’re not stopping,” he said.

“No shit!” she snapped, then added a little less harshly, “Should I go after them?”

“No. The insurance can handle it. Let Ramsay get the excess. We can’t draw attention to ourselves by chasing down a boy racer,” he replied. “Besides, we need to get back and pool our information. But perhaps driving like Lewis Hamilton wouldn’t have…”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence!” she shouted in good humour. She accelerated for the next bend, apparently unperturbed by the incident and determined to show King that her confidence had not been shattered by the collision. Ahead of them, the long straight climb to the layby where the campervan was parked was a blur of activity with a blue Robinson R44 helicopter landing in the middle of the road. “What the hell is going on here?”

King stared ahead, eyes transfixed. “Faster,” he told her. “As fast as you can bloody well go…”

Chapter Forty-Six

Big Dave and Flymo had been waiting on a short plateau further up the mountain and out of sight of the pass. After returning the Bell Jet Ranger without a door and with bullet holes in the underbelly, the hire company had been handsomely paid to keep quiet but would not hire out another aircraft to Flymo. The next hire company was far smaller than the first and had a fleet of four Robinson R44 helicopters. The R44 was a small four-seater popular with private licence holders because of its price point of around half a million pounds. For that reason, it had a terrible safety record because wealthy people who indulged their flying whims seldom put in the hours required to maintain the required skill levels after obtaining their licence. Flymo had used the aircraft as a commercial pilot in his civilian life and had put them through their paces with no problems and found the simplicity of the controls refreshing. Like riding a motorcycle or driving a classic car. The only problem so far was the fact that the big Fijian riding next to him took up more than half the cockpit.

The call from Ramsay had not been panicked – Ramsay seldom displayed emotion – but Big Dave had worked with the man long enough to know that the casualty evacuation that he requested was as serious as if could get. Flymo had the aircraft airborne within four minutes, which was acceptable considering the altitude. Two minutes at sea level would be a good start, but they were over eleven-thousand feet up and the air was thin. The take-off, however, saved them the time of start-up because Flymo simply climbed a few feet and dropped away down the mountainside. Gathering speed and momentum with the descent and without having to climb through thinning air, they were soon flying at over one-hundred-miles-per-hour and skimming the rocky terrain with just a few metres clearance, the ride exhilarating, or perhaps even terrifying enough for Big Dave – an experienced helicopter passenger – to grip the handle above his head and spread his feet wide against the bulkhead to grip himself in place, even though his harness was pulling tightly across his chest.

“Shit…” Flymo said as he saw the scene on the road. Big Dave murmured something under his breath and was already unbuckling the five-point harness and reaching under his seat for the comprehensive first aid kit. “I’m going to put down in the middle of the road,” he told him, and in his typical style, they came in fast and banking hard.

As was the case with many high-tension situations, the scene played out beneath them almost out of sync. Time always seemed slowed, and actions never seemed quite fast enough. Jim Kernow was performing vital first aid, trying to stem the blood flow. Big Dave could see how pale Luger looked and they were still a hundred-feet up. His white shirt was soaked red, and he wasn’t moving. Caroline and King were sprinting the short distance from where they had abandoned the Mercedes behind two vehicles whose drivers had stopped to assist. Ramsay was in purgatory – unable to get his wheelchair down from the doorway of the campervan – he was attempting to lower himself to the ground where Big Dave could only assume he would crawl over to assist.

The skids touched down hard and Big Dave alighted, first-aid kit in hand, crouching as he ran to clear the rotor blades. He reached Luger at the same time as Caroline and King and dropped to his knees. King tore at Luger’s shirt, ripping it clean from his inert body.

“It was Collins…” Jim said to everyone and no one. His hands were shaking as he pressed wads of bandage over the bullet wounds.

“I know,” King replied. “We passed him and didn’t realise. It had to be him fleeing the scene. The bastard’s getting away…”

“Let him!” Big Dave snapped. “Deal with the here and now!”

King nodded. His bloodlust for Collins was consuming him, and he knew it. His friend had just brought him back to earth with a bump. Not for the first time, and hopefully not for the last. “We need to turn him over,” he said. Big Dave helped him roll the man over and King snatched some bandages and started to press them into the exit wounds on his back. Thankfully, the bullets had been full metal jacket rounds and not hollow points, which would have created larger exit wounds and severe cavity trauma.

“We need to get him to hospital…” Caroline said quietly, staring at Luger’s lifeless body.

“Agreed, we’re just wasting time, here,” King replied, his eyes scouring the four bullet wounds to his chest. There were two bullet wounds to his arms as well, but they were not a priority given the seriousness of the others. “There’s sever internal bleeding. My guess is a bullet has clipped the aorta…”

Big Dave was already lifting Luger, and King caught hold of the man’s feet and between them they ran him to the helicopter, with Caroline sprinting ahead to open the rear door. With Luger resting limply in the seat, there was only room for one more in the rear, and King climbed inside and continued to keep pressure on the wounds that were bleeding the most. Caroline climbed into the front of the cockpit, turned around in her seat and leaned through to the rear to assist. Kernow ran over, tossed the first-aid kit inside and closed the door, the aircraft lifting off the ground a second later.

“I’ve called ahead, told them to expect multiple gunshot wounds,” said Flymo, but in the chaos neither King nor Caroline had put on their headsets, and his voice was drowned out by the engine and rotor blades. He applied the power and flew over the edge of the pass to dive and gain even more speed. With Caroline and King shouting instructions to one another, tearing off lengths of tape and pressing bandages and gauze, packing the wounds to stem the blood flow, Flymo simply said quietly, “Hang in there, Jack…”

Chapter Forty-Seven

There was little that Rashid could do other than watch helplessly as the helicopter landed and evacuated the casualty. He had observed the scene in the sights of his rifle, torn between packing up and heading to the campervan to arrive too late, or try and see what was happening in the crosshairs of his rifle scope. He knew he would not reach them in time and had packed his kit and watched the helicopter take off. Heading down the mountainside, he could only guess at what had happened and hoped that every member of the team was ok, but obviously someone had been severely hurt. He could rule out Caroline and King, whom he had seen arrive at the scene and sprint out of sight behind the campervan, and he watched as the hulk of Big Dave got out of the helicopter and later came back to the aircraft with King and Caroline. Jim Kernow had thrown a package into the helicopter. Which left Neil Ramsay and Jack Luger. He could only speculate, but he knew that Richard Collins had to be behind it.

Rashid had yomped – a relentless combination of a fast walk alternated with a steady jog, to maintain both pace and stamina – for thirty minutes and finally emerged onto the pass, hot and perspiring and breathing heavily. The traffic had freed, but there was no sign of police or emergency services and Rashid figured that Jim Kernow had moved the rubberneckers along, and he could see the man packing things into a hired SUV. It looked as if Kernow had been busy because blood had been washed off the road and dirt had been kicked in its place. When he saw Rashid, his shoulders sagged and he walked towards him.

“Luger was shot,” he said. “He’s been medevac’d to the nearest hospital, but it’ll be bloody touch and go…”

“What happened?”

“Collins shot him. Luger just opened the door of the camper and walked right into about a dozen shots. He took at least four bullets to the chest, a couple elsewhere. It was a mess…”

“Shit…”

“I’m finishing up here,” he said. “Ramsay is just finishing packing up the technical kit, and Big Dave is getting ready to torch the camper. Bullet holes and blood will take too much explaining. It was difficult enough getting the traffic to drive on past.”

Rashid nodded and walked to the camper where he found Ramsay shutting down one of the laptops and downloading the data from the other onto a flash drive. He rested the rifle case against the side of the campervan and climbed inside, noticing the macabre sight of Luger’s blood both on the floor and splashed against the cupboards, which also had several bullet holes punched through.

Ramsay looked up and scowled. “This is a total disaster. AJB Suisse know that Caroline’s cover story was a hoax, and that means that they will be on full alert, and King and Caroline are now tied up elsewhere…”

“How’s Jack?” Rashid asked, his expression telling Ramsay that he had his priorities quite wrong.

Ramsay only had order and method, objective and result. For him, everything else was superfluous. It was what had made him a formidable player in MI5, but someone that nobody ever felt truly close to, nor would probably miss when they parted company. “I don’t know,” he replied tersely.

Rashid stepped back outside, took out his phone and texted King.

Rashid: Sit-rep?

King: In surgery. Not looking good.

Rashid put his phone back in his pocket and walked around the vehicle where Big Dave was clearing out the rear storage compartment and had gathered two cans of petrol, a can of motor oil and a 5kg camping gas cannister. He stood up and tossed a disposable barbeque beside the haul.

“It’s all fucked up,” the Big Fijian said heavily.

“How bad was it?”

“Bad.”

“Is he going to make it?”

“I really can’t call it. Don’t want to, either.” Big Dave shrugged. “There was a lot of blood, mate.”

“Shit…”

“We can’t leave it like this, though.”

“What do you mean?”

The big Fijian shrugged. “We were both in the Regiment,” he said of the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment, or SAS. “The way I see it, we have a job to do, and it still gets done whether we’re a man down, or three, or if it’s just us two dickheads left standing.”

“I hear you,” Rashid replied. “When?”

“There’s no point in procrastinating. It all went south down there, so there’s no sense in waiting for them to regroup, get more personnel or figure out what we’re up to.”

“Tonight, would be the best bet, then.”

“I reckon so…”

Chapter Forty-Eight

“So, you maintain that…”

“I say that…” Caroline interrupted him. “To maintain a statement means to persistently and firmly uphold or declare that a statement is true, especially in the face of disagreement or doubt.” She paused. “Which is what you are doing. Doubting my truth.”

The police detective returned to his notes, turning over the page deliberately as he read unhurriedly. “You were just flying around the Alps when you spotted a man having been shot…”

“I think you’ve finally got it,” King replied irritably. “And as I said previously, we hired the helicopter and pilot. Together. A package deal.”

“Who is no longer around for us to question,” the detective said pointedly.

“It costs a lot of money to hire a helicopter and pilot. I’m only glad he didn’t invoice us for the hospital run…”

“And what was the name of the company you used?”

“I don’t know offhand. I have the details at my hotel.”

“Why is this a problem?” Caroline interjected.

The detective regarded her closely, then said, “Gun crime is very low in my country. We take shooting incidents very seriously.”

“I’m only too glad to hear it,” she replied frostily. “Now, if you don’t mind, my partner and I will be on our way. You have our details, or phone numbers and the name of the hotel where we are staying. We have a long drive now that we have been left here without a ride back.” She turned and walked to the door leaving the detective somewhat perplexed.

King glanced at the police officer, shrugged and followed, waiting for the detective to shout after them, but it never came. “Bloody hell,” he said quietly as he caught up with her in the corridor. “I think we might have got away with it….”

“It was going nowhere,” she replied. “Sometimes it just pays to leave officials deciding what they really have on you, and what they are going to do about it. His only option once we walked would be to arrest us. And for what? Giving a casualty a lift to hospital and helping the paramedics get him off the chopper?” She paused. “Bloody Flymo left us to face the music, though.”

“He did his job,” said King. “It was merely a tactical withdrawal. One less person for the police to question and we still have the helicopter at our disposal. The police would have probably impounded it.”

“I suppose,” she replied as they reached the lifts, but she walked on and took the stairwell. Lifts held too many surprises. They could be stopped, and you never knew who would be waiting for you at the bottom. “Jesus Christ,” she said heavily and exhaled deeply. “Jack is in a bad way, isn’t he?”

“It’s not good…” King couldn’t think of anything more pertinent. He had seen plenty of people die instantly with far less bullets than Luger had taken. He hadn’t expected the young man to make the short helicopter flight, let alone survive long enough to get into the operating theatre. He checked his watch. Luger had been in surgery for three hours and now that they had avoided the continuous questioning, he knew that they were out of the loop, unable to get updates, or at least read the room with the comings and goings of nursing staff and doctors. “He’s made it this far,” he said. “He’s receiving first-class medical attention and will have been given multiple blood transfusions.”

“I prayed for him,” she said as the reached the bottom flight of stairs. “Is that daft?”

“Can’t do any harm,” he replied.

“You don’t believe in that sort of thing…”

King said nothing. It was true, he wasn’t entirely sure if he did believe. But that hadn’t stopped him hedging his bets in the worst of times.

As they stepped out into the reception and waiting room, two uniformed police officers approached and blocked their path. King tensed. He eyed the officers’ weapons, noted that the holsters had hammer loops securing them in place. He had already assessed the layout of the room, where the exits were and the position of civilians if he went for one of the pistols and a shootout followed. It was a poor scenario, so he would probably stick to his fists.

“One moment, please,” one of the officers said. “Detective Keller would like to speak to you…”

“Well, he can do it through our bloody lawyer,” Caroline said tersely.

“It won’t take that long…” Detective Keller said breathily from behind them. He had clearly run down a separate stairwell trying to head them off. “You have friends in high places,” he smirked.

“She does, but I don’t,” King shrugged.

“You both do,” Keller replied. “As does that poor man up there…”

“Get on with it, detective,” Caroline said impatiently.

“Very well. I just thought I would inform you that the British Consulate has informed my chief that Mr Luger has diplomatic immunity.”

“He does? Well, well,” Caroline commented flatly. “Is that all, or can we go now?”

“And you do not have such immunity?”

King grinned. “No, but it’s early days…”

The detective did not seem amused. “My chief told me that a diplomat named Arthur Wilber-Scott contacted him, and when he ignored the man’s requests, that was when the British Ambassador substantiated his claim, and a call was lodged with Swiss Confederation. My chief was contacted directly by the President of the Swiss Confederation, no less.” He paused, his expression not hiding his disdain for the development. “However, I do not believe that the man lying in that operating theatre is any more a diplomat than my mother-in-law is.”

“And yet, there’s fuck all you can do about it, chum,” King smiled. “Not without ending your career and that of your chief…”

“Anything else?” Caroline asked but again turned and walked away without waiting for him to reply. She turned to King as they stepped outside into the cold air and asked, “Who on earth is Arthur Wilber-Scott?”

“He’s the guy Ramsay and the rest of the team are working for. I haven’t met him…” He paused looking at the empty taxi rank. “I came here after Collins and got pulled into this. I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting they guy, but I hear he’s a bit of a fop.”

“How long was I inside?” she laughed exasperatedly. “Who is he? I mean, who are we working for?”

“The Crown, I gather. Neither Five, nor Six, nor GCHQ.” He shrugged as a taxi pulled into the rank and he raised his arm. “Which means that whoever they are, they must be effective because I’ve never heard of another organisation working parallel to the other services, and I’ve worked for both Five and those shits across the river.” He checked his watch and said, “We need to get back and see what’s what. Collins is still out there, and it will be just like him to try and strike another blow while we’re all over the place.”

Chapter Forty-Nine

Jim Kernow had parked the campervan on the edge of the precipice and brewed a mug of tea. The chill night air was quiet, serene. Once the kettle had boiled and he switched off the gas, the only sound was of him stirring the milk and sugar with the teaspoon. He stepped outside into the darkness and sipped his tea, the night so still that it was somewhat eerie. He checked his watch. Almost time.

After the helicopter had whisked Luger away to the hospital, Ramsay had got busy on the phone and with emails and a plan had been hatched with Arthur Wilber-Scott to lobby the right people to grant Luger diplomatic immunity. That would give the man freedom from police questioning and prosecution when he regained consciousness. If he regained consciousness. Kernow knew all about gunshot trauma and in truth, was surprised that he had even made it to the helicopter, let alone the hospital. He was not out of the woods yet.

They had taken a suite and several rooms at a hotel in nearby Sternbach which had vacancies between the late-summer hiking season and the winter sports season. Ramsay had set up his ‘office’ in the suite, and although Jim had not wanted to leave his charge’s side, the team were down on numbers and spread too thin for him to afford Ramsay permanent protection. Besides, Rashid and Big Dave had told him what they wanted of him, and he would be free to return once his task was completed. They had left the hotel in a convoy of three vehicles, parked the BMW in the layby where Kernow now waited, and continued together in the large Kia SUV that Jim had hired to accommodate Ramsay’s wheelchair.

Kernow sipped his tea then blew on it before taking another mouthful. He checked his watch again then picked up the disposable barbeque and stepped outside, walked around the campervan and opened the passenger door before placing the disposable barbeque in the footwell and lighting it with a disposable lighter. The paper beneath the grill smouldered and flamed and the heavily fuelled charcoal lit quickly. He closed the door, the cabin starting to fill with acrid smoke with a strong chemical odour. Jim picked up his tea and sipped some more, before tossing the rest of it on the ground and dropping the mug in the sink. Secured on the backseats the two fuel cans nestled beside the gas bottle, and he reached down and unscrewed both fuel can caps. He took a deep breath, then twisted the valve on the gas bottle and leapt out, closing the door behind him. Kernow then opened the driver’s door and removed the keys from the ignition and locked the steering wheel with the wheels lined up perfectly straight. When he reached inside and removed the handbrake, gravity did the rest. The vehicle started to roll downhill, gaining momentum until it simply disappeared over the edge of the abyss. Kernow walked calmly to the edge and watched as the campervan thundered down the steep gradient, bouncing over rocks but remaining on its wheels as it gained momentum. When it eventually hammered through the fence of AJB Suisse, it caught in the wire and spun in the air. He imagined the petrol spilling from the cans, the embers from the barbeque scattering in the air like hot, glowing hail, igniting the petrol fumes and gas-filled air. He watched intently, then smiled when the flames erupted and burned fiercely lighting up the sky, just enough for him to make out two black-clad figures running out from the rocks and into the facility through the whole the campervan had created in the fence.

Chapter Fifty

Rashid and Big Dave moved quickly. Armed with five-shot, automatic shotguns, they had loaded them with non-lethal beanbag rounds, often called riot rounds or ‘friendly’ bear rounds, and guaranteed to put a man on his backside at fifty-metres. Attached to the stocks of the shotguns were elasticated shell holders, each holding five rounds of 00-Buckshot. Guaranteed to put a man in a coffin at fifty-metres. They were a last resort, but both men were prepared to use them after what had happened transpired between Caroline and the security team earlier.

By now, the CCTV cameras, now set to infrared, would be ‘flaring’ from the bright flames and distorting everything, including the ability to pick up movement. They were up against the clock, because along with a full security alert, the emergency services would have been called to tackle the fire and search for either survivors or bodies in the burning campervan. There was nothing covert about their objective now.

Rashid skidded to a halt at the entrance to the administration building and Big Dave crouched facing the compound, his shotgun shouldered and covering a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree arc of fire. Rashid worked the lock-picks and after thirty-seconds, he had the door open and slipped inside. Once inside, Rashid slid the goggles further up his forehead and switched on the headtorch he was wearing, flicking through the modes to the red filter. He unscrewed the alarm panel and studied the wires, then used a pair of wire cutters to snip the two red wires. He sliced the plastic cable covering with an electrician’s wire snip and removed the plastic before he attached a separate pre-prepared length of wire with two crocodile clips to bypass the circuit. He stood back and waited, then flicked off the headtorch and slid the night vision goggles back in place and waved for Big Dave to follow him. Inside the building, away from the burning fuel and five-metre-high flames licking the night sky, it was easier to see without the flaring to distort their vision through their night vision goggles. Both men kept their weapons shouldered as they worked their way down the corridor to the location that Ramsay had concluded would be the housing for the mainframe. He had done this by studying heat signatures through the drone’s thermal imaging camera, of the airducts and fans built into the roof, and the distance and vicinity of the air-conditioning units outside. The mainframe required substantial cooling, and the only other building to have cooling and air extraction did so in such a large scale that Ramsay had deduced that it could only be laboratories for the development, testing and manufacture of pharmaceutical products. Both men had their tasks, but they knew each other’s as well. They did not have the luxury of back-up, but they were both confident that they could complete the task if one of them went down.

Rashid squatted on his haunches to pick the lock of the next door and the torch beam almost blinded his vision, magnified many times by his night vision goggles. Big Dave lifted his googles onto his head and aimed at the light. In the confines of the corridor, the shotgun’s blast was deafening. The torch spun and clattered on the floor, and they could hear the guard’s groans from thirty metres away. Big Dave lowered the shotgun and shone his own torch down the corridor. The guard was rolling from side to side clutching his stomach, and it would have felt like he had been kicked in the guts by a horse. Big Dave ran over to him and dropped the shotgun butt onto the point of the man’s jaw and he went still. He hauled him over onto his front to lessen his chances of choking, then checked him over for keys. The man was carrying a set of keys, and an electronic key fob and Big Dave unclipped them from his belt and jogged back where Rashid was using the lock-picks on the lock. Each door had a keypad and keyless fob sensor, but in the event of a power outage manual locks had been fitted as standard. Big Dave pressed the key fob against the keypad and the door clicked open.

“That’s easier,” he grinned.

“Until that guard fails to check in.” Rashid led the way past a bank of monitors and workstations and stopped at a double door with a yellow warning sign indicating the risk of electrical shock. He used the key fob, but it failed to open the lock. “This has to be the mainframe,” he said. “Off limits to all but the technical specialists.” He searched for a manual mortise lock but there was none. Outside he could hear shouts and a general commotion. He checked his watch. Time was on fast-forward, and they had used up close to ten minutes already. Above the outside noise he could hear the first of what he imagined would be many emergency vehicle sirens. “No lock,” he said, testing the door to see if it would give.

Big Dave nodded and took a homemade charge out of his tactical vest pocket. The charge comprised of a sticky solution of bleach, petroleum jelly and chemical fertiliser, but to act as a thermal cutting charge instead of an explosive, he had slowed the compound down with powder from shotgun cartridges and finely ground charcoal as it had reached certain temperatures that he had measured with a chef’s sugar thermometer. When the compound had cooled, it became malleable like child’s Play-Doh. He pressed the putty down the centre where the two doors met, then pressed in a fuse that he had made from a roll of paper masking tape sprinkled liberally with powder from a shotgun cartridge and folded to seal, then twisted into something that resembled a strand of spaghetti. He lit the other end of the fuse and stepped back, looking away from the charge. The fuse burned through quickly and when it ignited the charge, rather than detonating, the putty burned fiercely, yellow-white and with little smoke. When the compound had burned out, Big Dave stepped in and drove a front kick at the centre of the doors and they crashed inwards, the lock completely melted through. Rashid took a laptop out from his pack while Big Dave set up a military field satellite with a fold-out dish. He switched it on and moved it around to find the right direction. On the top of the base unit a button compass acted as a guide and a counter of orange digital numbers counted both up and down, depending on which direction he moved it. When the numbers aligned with the exact coordinates that Ramsay had given them it meant that the link was complete. He set the unit down and unravelled a high-definition Ethernet cable and plugged it into the back of the base unit making sure not to move the satellite unit and change the coordinates by even a single degree. He handed the other end to Rashid, who plugged it into the laptop and then used another cable to plug directly into the mainframe. Rashid then switched on the laptop, opened an app on the home screen and waited. Almost at once the screen filled with code and scrolled in a blur. Twenty miles away in his hotel suite, Ramsay was instructing his virus to destroy all the files in the data mainframe of AJB Suisse. The company who never used the internet for their research and development mainframe had just gone online for the first time and been hacked.

“How long is this going to take?” asked Big Dave.

“Don’t you ever listen to briefings?”

“You know how it is… Ramsay is bloody boring…”

“Eight minutes,” Rashid sighed, checking his watch. Now that they were close to their objective time had done what it usually did in such circumstances and almost stood still. “It’s getting noisy out there,” he said, nodding towards the sound.

“Any thoughts on the exfil?”

“The fence is down. The circuit is incomplete.” He shrugged. “I hope…”

“Out the back, cut through the fence and take off up the adjacent mountainside?”

“We’ll be exposed once the police get some night vision.”

“Out the front gate in the chaos?” Big Dave paused. “I’m starting to think we underestimated the speed at which the cops would get here…”

Rashid tutted. “Then perhaps you should have paid more attention at the briefing…”

“Crash camper through fence, get inside, connect satellite dish and mainframe to laptop…” Big Dave shrugged. “No, I think I got it…”

“Rear fence,” said Rashid. “The river runs parallel to the facility and the adjacent mountainside. We get to the river and swim or wade our way to the lake. We will be below the line of sight of the security and the police. Jim will meet us there in the SUV.”

“That’s the one,” Big Dave said with a smile. “I just thought it would pass the time. A watched pot never boils, and all that. What have we got?”

“Time,” Rashid said, and he checked the screen. Ramsay had logged off. He unplugged the laptop and put it in his pack while Big Dave packed away the military field satellite dish.

Big Dave led the way out of the computer suite and into the corridor. He shined his torch both ways down the corridor. “Whoops,” he said. “Our security guard has done a runner.”

“Couldn’t you have hit him harder?”

The big Fijian rolled his eyes. “I was trying not to kill or maim some guy just working security to pay the bills,” he said. “I’ll know not to bother next time…”

Gunfire erupted from the end of the corridor and both men returned fire, suddenly feeling impotent returning non-lethal rounds towards the muzzle flashes, with bullets fizzing past their ears and striking the walls around them. Rashid backed away, firing as he went. He wanted to increase his distance from the gunmen and change sides of the corridor so that both he and Big Dave did not present themselves as a single target. He ducked behind an adjacent corridor and reloaded, contemplating switching to the 00-Buckshot, but deciding to give another five rounds of non-lethal rounds a chance first. He heard shouts and heavy impacts after a volley from Big Dave, and he guessed that one or more men had gone down. Rashid shouted for Big Dave to pullback, and as the big Fijian ran in a crouch to keep his massive frame from being an easy target, Rashid fired a volley of three shots over the man’s head. He felt a sting and knew that he’d been hit, and as Big Dave covered for him to withdrawal, he looked down at his left arm and saw blood.

“Damn it!”

“Are you ok?”

“Yes. I’ve been winged,” he said angrily. “Fuck this, I’m going to lethal…” Rashid turned and fired the remaining two shots down the corridor and started to load the 00-Buckshot into the action underneath the shotgun. He dropped the bolt, the weapon now made ready.

Outside, the night was aglow. The fire was burning fiercely, but a fire crew were pulling up in a tender, so the light and distraction from the fire would not last long. More gunfire erupted to their eleven o’clock and the two men ducked down behind a low wall where commercial waste bins were stored as the gunfire took on a far more disciplined volley, the weapon calibre sounding altogether more serious than the 9mm pistols they had been up against inside.

“We can’t fire on the police,” Rashid said, somewhat fatalistically.

“I know.” Big Dave leapt up, fired three rounds of non-lethal and ducked down again. “Well, I guess we can…”

Rashid laughed and followed suit, firing a double tap towards the fence at leg level. “That’ll sting a bit,” he said as he ducked back down.

Big Dave risked another shot but was rewarded with a hail of bullets that struck the wall in front of him. He ducked back down and racked the charging handle twice, ejecting the last two non-lethal rounds before loading in the 00-Buckshot. “I changed my mind,” he said. “These guys aren’t playing anymore.”

“I don’t think they ever were…”

Big Dave looked to the noise in the sky where a helicopter was approaching. “They’ve got reinforcements by the sound of it.”

“Bugger…”

The helicopter swooped low and both men watched as tiny, bright yellow lights flickered in the air below the aircraft, cascading down to the ground. As each tiny flame struck the ground, great flames licked the sky with a definitive ‘woof’ sound, and they could see police officers and emergency workers running for their lives. The fires burned fiercely, the facility illuminated by the flames, and the ferocity of the explosions raining down on the ground meant that even from their distance and behind cover, both Rashid and Big Dave could feel the heat.

“They’re bloody petrol bombs!” Big Dave exclaimed. He watched as the helicopter made another pass, but this time, the fires illuminated the craft. The rear doors had been removed, and a figure was crouched in the rear tossing the burning petrol bombs out, raining devastation below. “It’s King and Flymo!”

The helicopter climbed, then banked and performed another pass, with four petrol bombs spiralling downwards like flickering candles, then roaring wildly as the bottles smashed and spilled burning fuel on the ground, with flames leaping high into the air, and swirls of billowing smoke caught in the downdraft of the rotor blades. The air was thick with smoke, intense and acrid, that filled the eyes and mouth and pulled on your survival instincts to run. The helicopter dropped rapidly in altitude, then hovered a metre from the ground, smoke swirling and the noise of the rotors all-consuming. Gunshots echoed in the night, and King leaned out of the open doorway and fired a pistol steadily towards the fenceline. His shots were well spaced, enough to pin down the police and buy Rashid and Big Dave precious time. He was firing as close to the police officers as he dared, and he seamlessly changed magazines and continued his hail of gunfire until his weapon was empty. He then tossed it aside and took a two-way radio handset from his pocket and pressed the transmit button. High above the facility along the ridge, a series of explosions reeled off in quick succession casting bright orange glows across the mountainside, followed by the thunderous sound of rockfall tumbling down towards the fence. In the warm, yellow light from flickering of flames, security personnel, police officers and emergency workers gazed upwards, then darted out from cover in unison to flee the deadly avalanche of scree and rocks.

“The guy’s got some fucking moves!” Big Dave shouted above the noise.

“The crafty bastard must have planted charges up there when we were on our reconnaissance!” Rashid beamed back at him.

Big Dave patted Rashid on the shoulder and shouted above the cacophony of noise, “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

Both men ran, ducking their heads as they drew near and felt the downdraft on their necks. Big Dave leapt into the rear and King kicked the crate that had held the petrol bombs secure out of the door to make room for the big Fijian. Rashid was barely inside, sitting to the left of Flymo as the aircraft lifted and banked hard away from the fires and emergency personnel and towards the darkness of the foot of the mountain.

“Did you do it?” King shouted above the noise.

Big Dave nodded. “We did it…”

Chapter Fifty-One

Buckingham Palace, One Week Later

The Prime Minister followed the footman as he did every Wednesday afternoon. He did not like the opulence of the palace, but he would have to admit that the sense of history was powerful, if not a little overwhelming. Great men had walked the corridor for an audience with the monarch, and despite being hugely divisive, a great female Prime Minister, too. There had been interlopers, of course. Prime Ministers who had been woeful. Prime Ministers who had been self-serving liars, and nobody would ever forget the woman who had been outlasted by a lettuce. Did the Prime Minister feel like he was an imposter? No. He struggled at times – although he would never admit it – but he felt that he had the nation’s interest at heart. Nobody said that the job would be easy.

This visit was a long-standing constitutional practice in which the Prime Minister briefs the monarch on matters of government, national security, and international affairs. These discussions are strictly confidential, with no officials or aides present in the room, allowing for candid dialogue between the sovereign and the head of government. The Prime Minister is expected to provide updates on Cabinet decisions, political developments, and any issues of national importance. While the King retains a neutral stance and does not intervene in political matters, he may offer counsel, ask searching questions, and provide a sense of continuity and perspective, drawing on his experience and knowledge of state affairs. The audience typically lasts around twenty to thirty minutes, but the duration can vary depending on the topics discussed. Following the meeting, the Prime Minister often returns to Downing Street to continue the business of government, while the details of the discussion remain entirely private, reinforcing the trust and discretion that underpin the relationship between the monarch and the British Prime Minister. He had been intimidated at first. Her majesty Queen Elizabeth II had been renowned for her curt demeanour and no-nonsense attitude, especially in times of political uncertainty or controversy, and he was glad that his audience was with the King. To date, he had found the King to be understanding and sympathetic to modern-day politics and the constant judgement and interpretation of events by social media. He had recognised that a Prime Minister’s exposure to critique was unprecedented. The Royal Family had, in recent years, been as much a victim of this as anyone else.

The Prime Minister looked up as Major Dalton stepped out from his office and headed him off. To most people the position of Prime Minister commanded respect, but the King’s personal secretary had shown half a dozen world leaders into the King’s audience room, as well two British Prime Ministers, and although not rude, he did not shy away from showing indifference.

“Good afternoon, Prime Minister,” Major Dalton greeted him neutrally. “We’ll be in the eighteen-forty-four room today.”

“Oh, very well,” the Prime Minister replied and followed Major Dalton. He noticed that the footman had turned around and walked back the way they came without comment. The Prime Minister found the footmen somewhat creepy in their seventeenth century regalia, and as a man of the people, was more comfortable in the presence of people like Major Dalton, who he understood had served for fifteen years in the Blues and Royals before occupying various personal secretary positions with the immediate Royal Family.

Major Dalton stopped and paused at a twelve-foot-high white painted door furnished with gold handles. He opened the door and stood aside for the Prime Minister to walk through. Normally the King’s personal secretary would enter first, announce the visitor and retreat, only re-entering when the King rang a bell, and by his expression, the Prime Minister clearly found Major Dalton’s actions odd.

“Come in, Prime Minister, sit down…” Arthur Wilber-Scott said politely, yet firmly. He was seated at a low marble table with ornate gold legs, and at either end of the table a velvet chair, equally ornate signalled that the Prime Minister should sit opposite him.

“Who are you?”

“It’s not who I am, Prime Minister, but who I am.”

“What?” the Prime Minister frowned as he sat down. The table was low, and more suited for tea or coffee, and yet there were no refreshments laid out for them.

Wilber-Scott picked up a folder in front of him, opened it and slid a sheet of paper towards the end of the table. “There’s an American billionaire who made a variety of friends around the globe. Many celebrities, businessmen and politicians… you know the score.” He paused, lowering his voice to a hushed tone that seemed a trifle melodramatic, but he had the Prime Minister’s attention. “Even cost the palace a pretty penny, too.”

“What exactly are you getting at, Mr…?”

“Call me Arty.”

“Arty?” the Prime Minster replied questioningly. “Well, it’s been interesting meeting you, and I don’t know to what you are inferring…” the Prime Minister stood up. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have an audience with His Majesty the King…”

“Sit down, or this file and copies of it with be with every television and newspaper media outlet within the hour.” Wilber-Scott waited until the Prime Minister begrudgingly returned to his seat. “This friendship with the notorious billionaire cost our American ambassador his post. But there were just a few emails in his case.” He paused. “And now it would seem this relationship has cost the nation their Prime Minister.”

The Prime Minister frowned as he studied the pages in front of him. “Those emails could have been from anyone,” he said eventually.

“Oh, of course.” Wilber-Scott took out a series of photographs and slid them across the table. “I knew there was something about you,” he said. “Something creepy, in a dodgy pervy uncle kind of way. But those photographs are quite something, aren’t they?”

“These…” the Prime Minister trailed off, his ego deflated and a grey pallor overwhelming his face.

“Are genuine, taken fifteen years ago on the island. What was she? Thirteen or fourteen. That would have made you thirty-five, thirty-six at the time. She was the same age in the photographs as your own daughter is now.” Wilber-Scott paused heavily. “You can say that they’ve been photoshopped, or that it’s a hoax, or, and God I hate this one… Fake News… but we both know that they’re real. The question is: do you have the stomach to fight this?”

“It was a long time ago…”

“The girl was one of many trafficked to the man’s guests. And that’s how it worked, didn’t it. Favours for favours, only once you owed him a favour, he had you like this…” Wilber-Scott clenched his fist in front of the man, and there was no confusion that he meant to show that he had a pair of testicles in his grasp. “But we both know that this girl won’t be a problem for you, because after you secured your seat in parliament as a backbencher, she met a terrible end. Just twenty and claimed by a hit and run driver, who was never found. That was rather a piece of luck, wasn’t it? I mean, once a person rises into the public domain, gets interviewed on the news, it sparks something in their victims. They do their best to quash the awful memories, but do you think they can when the perpetrator is in their face on the television every night, or in the morning newspaper? Of course not. Suddenly, there is a change in balance. The victim sees their chance to even the score.”

“What are you getting at?”

“We both know what I’m getting at.” He reached into the folder and slid a photograph across the table. “There she is. Twenty. On a mortuary slab.” Wilber-Scott paused. “I can only imagine the relief you must have felt.”

“I knew nothing about it!”

“To say knew implies past tense, when to say know implies present tense,” Wilber-Scott said pointedly. “If you are going to deny all knowledge of a human being’s existence, then at least do her the curtesy of the correct tense.”

The Prime Minister sighed. “What are we doing here?”

“Believe me, if this young lady was still alive, then we would not be having this conversation.” He paused, his expression dropping and his stare becoming intense. “Because we would hang you out to dry. You’d go down in history as the nonce at Number Ten, your wife would divorce you and your son and daughter would disown you. I imagine you would find that you only have fair weather friends in the eye of the almightiest storm imaginable.”

“I... I need my lawyer…”

“AJB Suisse was a step too far,” Wilber-Scott said, glancing at a spot on his fingernail with apparent disdain. “It got us digging into your affairs, and when one digs into a person’s affairs, they first start with the past. And what a past that was. You see, my predecessor had dug as deeply as one can into a certain avenue of interest. This family…” he said, raising his eyes to look all around the room, “… had a black sheep, too. So, there was a lot of material to pull on, a lot of information that came across my desk.”

The Prime Minister loosened his tie, beads of perspiration glistening on his furrowed brow. He tossed the photographs onto the table and laid back in his chair, tears in his eyes. “What do you want from me?”

“There will be no more audiences with His Majesty the King. For the next month you will arrive at the palace every Wednesday afternoon and be shown into a room, whereby you will leave forty-minutes later. There will, incidentally, be no refreshments provided. Your first task will be to remove the current director of the Security Service and replace him with one of four candidates…” Wilber-Scott took a business card from his pocket and slid it across to him. “We don’t care who because we do not have any desire to influence, but those four people are senior members of the service and not close to the excuse for a man whom you appointed at the beginning of your term as Prime Minister, and with whom you went to university.” He paused. “Secondly…” He took another card from his pocket and slid it across the table where it landed on top of the first. “… you will order the Health Minister to sign four-year NHS contracts with at least two or perhaps even all four of those UK owned and based pharmaceutical companies, and not to look for investments or supply from our American friends until they get their own house of disarray in order.”

“It’s as good as done,” he shrugged.

Wilber-Scott sighed. “And that just leaves the subject of your resignation.”

“My what?” the Prime Minister replied angrily.

“You have exactly one month. You will take care of the first two points within three weeks. You will then resign. When the hustings for leadership are complete, you will leave quietly. There will be no book deal; no million-dollar bookings on the international lecture circuit.”

“That’s absurd!”

“No, what is absurd is even given the evidence, the facts and threatened with ruination, you persist to protest.” Wilber-Scott took one last photograph from the file and tossed it across the table with utter distaste. “That is a child in the picture with you. You tied her up and raped her. You see the expression on her face? That’s agony. One can only imagine what you put her through, and she is the same age as your daughter is now.”

The Prime Minister looked away, unable to hold the man’s stare. “And on what grounds do I resign?” he asked solemnly, although Wilber-Scott was left under no illusion that the excuse for a man in front of him was mourning the loss of his career, and not for what he had put the young girl through. “People will ask questions.”

Wilber-Scott leaned in conspiratorially and waited for the man to close the gap before whispering, “I honestly couldn’t give a fuck, old boy… I don’t care what the press asks, or what they infer. But you do it, and you stick to it, and you make sure that points one and two are set in quick-drying concrete…”

Chapter Fifty-Two

London

As they made their way through Primrose Hill on a crisp autumn day, the air was tinged with the earthy scent of damp leaves and distant woodsmoke. The trees, resplendent in their seasonal finery, displayed a glorious palette of amber, russet, and gold, their leaves fluttering gently to the ground with every passing breeze. Beneath their feet, the grass was slick with dew and scattered with conkers and acorns, crunching softly with each step.

From the top of the hill, London’s skyline appeared softened by a gentle haze, the city’s busy heartbeat muted in the sanctuary of the park. Families strolled arm in arm, couples sat on benches sharing flasks of tea, and dogs chased after sticks, their breath visible in the cold air. There was a tranquil stillness that settled over Primrose Hill in autumn, a brief pause before the onset of winter, and a reminder of nature’s enduring grace even in the heart of the capital. As they reached their street, the terraced houses curving round the crescent, Mathew Saunders and his wife Samantha waited for their two children to catch up before climbing the eight granite steps to their four-storey town house.

Inside, Samantha supervised the two children as they disrobed coats, scarves, gloves and wellington boots, hanging them up on a rail of hooks significantly lower than that of their parents. Mathew kissed his wife on the cheek before heading up to his study. Family time was precious, but he always felt a little relieved when he returned to his study at the weekend because of his workload and the fact that he rarely went an hour without being contacted or copied into a dozen or more emails. And it was a rare weekend indeed when he did not receive a call from the Prime Minister.

Saunders opened the door to his study and stepped in but froze when he saw the man seated at his desk. He felt someone grab him from behind, shove him into the bookcase and was aware of the person kicking the door closed behind them. He felt the cold bite of the pistol below his right ear, the unmistakable smell of gun oil and the man’s neutral, hot breath on the back of his neck.

“Don’t… make… a sound…” the man said gruffly. He expertly patted Saunders down, then pushed him away from him, keeping the pistol aimed steadily at his back.

Saunders turned around slowly, frowning as he stared at King, a glimmer of recognition. “I know you…” He looked at Arthur Wilber-Scott who was seated behind his own desk in his very expensive leather-bound chair. “But I don’t know you…”

“No, you don’t.”

“Nice gaff you’ve got here,” said King. “Must have cost a pretty penny.”

“Family money,” Saunders replied, regaining a little composure. “Besides, Samantha’s family are extremely wealthy.”

“That bloke that played James Bond lives down the street,” said King. “I’m a Connery man, myself…”

“Lazenby for me, old boy,” Wilber-Scott said pointedly.

“Really?” King furrowed his brow, but the gun in his hand remained stock-still.

“Oh yes. Thoroughly underrated.”

“Please… what is this about?” Saunders looked at King, then frowned in faint recognition. “You’re one of Neil Ramsay’s lot…” he said accusingly.

King said nothing. But his stare said it all.

“Call off your dogs, Mr Saunders,” Wilber-Scott said tiresomely.

“I fail to see…”

“Do you see this!” King raised the pistol.

“Mr Saunders, you have actively sought to put Caroline Darby’s life at risk and intimidate and harass her legal representative,” said Wilber-Scott. “Do not even insult us by denying the fact. This has been a direct attempt to vilify Neil Ramsay’s department, which only came into effect because of security breaches within the Security Service under your stewardship.”

“The bitch escaped from prison…”

King swiped the man across the mouth with the pistol and he shrieked, then put a hand to his mouth and touched the broken front tooth, his fingers bloody. “Call her a bitch again, I dare you…” King caught hold of Saunders and roughly pushed him into a reading chair beside the bookcase. It was low and angled backwards and would not be easy to get out of quickly if the MI5 director thought he had a chance against the two. “The man said, call off your dogs…”

Saunders dabbed his lips and winced, then said, “Two of my officers are in intensive care. One may never walk again, and the other may have to piss in a bag for the rest of his life! You are the one who needs to call off his dog!”

“Trust me, given who they went up against, they got off easy. And I hear that it was a fair fight until they both pulled knives.” King replied coldly. “And keep your voice down if you don’t want your wife coming up here and asking awkward questions. Believe me, the last thing you want is for this to escalate, because I’m almost out of fucks to give…”

“You were appointed to Director General of the Security Service by the Prime Minister, and you have been influenced by the Prime Minister.” Wilber-Scott paused. “My question is: what has he got on you to manipulate you so easily?”

“Did you know about his relationship with the billionaire sex trafficker and paedophile?” asked King.

“No! What? No…”

King glanced at Wilber-Scott. For what it mattered, he believed him. King had become a human polygraph over the years, and his instincts were seldom proved wrong. “Then what?” he asked, glancing back at Wilber-Scott.

“I cheated my way through my degree…” he replied. “That’s all.”

“Your degree?”

“I got a first in sociology. I had friends do all my course work, and David even wrote my dissertation,” he said of the Prime Minister. “While I partied and squandered my grandfather’s inheritance. He’s used it against me all my life.”

“A fucking degree?” King shook his head.

“It opened doors for me,” he said defensively. “Oxford does. Where did you get your degree?”

“Hard Knocks University,” King replied acidly.

“Oh…” Saunders shrugged. “He was always there, threatening to expose my lie.”

“But a fucking degree…?” King repeated himself, exasperated.

Saunders shrugged. “Once he was heavily into politics, once he got his seat as a backbencher, he started opening doors for me. Then he was in the shadow cabinet, then after the election he was appointed Home Secretary. After the leadership contest and he became PM, he made me director of the Security Service. I know that I’m underqualified. Some directors have spent their lives as spies and others in business. Only, once I made first desk, I was beholden to him.”

“I find it hard to believe that you didn’t know about the PM’s involvement,” Wilber-Scott.

“Something came up. He asked me to make it go away. I sent somebody to deal with it. I assumed it was potential fallout from an affair. I didn’t want to know what it was, but David made funds available and the agent that I sent sorted it.”

“Oh, I know, old boy.” Wilber-Scott paused, impatiently tapping his fingers on the desk. For a few seconds the drumming grew louder, then stopped altogether when he said, “We have people everywhere, Mr Saunders. The spies across the river, Scotland Yard, all branches of the military. Some even in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Not much gets past us. Even this debacle…” He paused. “Your trusted agent was also my trusted agent.”

“I don’t even know who you are…” he said irritably before looking up at King. “I do recognise you, though. You were with the service. One of Simon Mereweather’s thugs, then went off with Ramsay.”

King stared at the man with disinterest, uninclined to confirm or deny. He turned to Wilber-Scott and said, “How about we wind this up?”

“No, don’t kill me!” Saunders begged, his eyes not leaving the muzzle of the pistol. “Please! My wife and children are downstairs!”

“I’m not going to kill you, you fucking lemon,” King said tersely. “Not unless you think about getting out of that chair before I tell you to.”

“You’re going to have a busy couple of weeks, old boy,” Wilber-Scott told him. “After which, you will need to seek further employment.”

“Further employment?” Saunders asked dejectedly.

“You sought to cover-up vile actions committed by the British Prime Minister.”

“Historical actions…”

“A nonce is a nonce, sunshine,” King growled. “But don’t worry, that first with honours from Oxford should still come in handy down at the dole office.”

“There’s always a silver lining,” Wilber-Scott said nonchalantly. “However, until then, this is what I want you to do…”

Chapter Fifty-Three

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Two Weeks Later

Despite the heat of the midday sun and the fact he was wearing a vintage leather biker jacket and helmet, the air felt cool as he hovered around seventy-miles-per-hour. He had undone the jacket halfway and the visor of his helmet was up, and he had not bothered with gloves because of the heat, and he wanted the dexterity to handle the 9mm pistol.

He had been following Richard Collins for most of the day, and he knew what the man had done. He had used a pair of powerful field glasses and watched Collins enter the home of the former Iranian secret police chief turned terrorism fixer, Omar Asad. Collins had left the house ten minutes after the man had returned home. There was something notable about the man’s body language as he had climbed back into his hired Toyota Landcruiser, and Collins had removed a pair of gloves as he sat behind the wheel. Collins had then driven to the home of the Saudi banker Hafeez, but to the apartment of his mistress. Hafeez was well-connected and well-protected, but he had his secrets and Collins had used them to his advantage. Now the fat, Saudi banker who was a cousin to the King lay dead beside his Russian mistress in the bed they shared three times a week.

Ramsay had discovered the details of both men in Abdullah’s emails and draft folders. As clever as the men had been, there had been enough for Ramsay to pull at a thread that soon unravelled. Disgruntled that he had fallen short of his brief in the London attacks, Collins had known that his only chance of peace was to kill both men and close the circle. Without enemies sworn on vengeance, Collins would have a chance to disappear, so it was imperative for the man to tie up the loose ends. King’s main issue had been when Collins would make his move. His instincts told him the sooner the better from Collins’ point of view, and he had been keeping tabs on the two men for ten days now, but his patience had paid off.

King studied the road ahead. Leaving the suburbs and the neat streets and manicured grassy areas gave way to golf courses and resorts, then gradually turned to scrubland and desert which now kissed each side of the ribbon of perfect tarmac with few vehicles either ahead or behind him. The opposite lane was busier as people drove towards the city, but still the traffic was light. Collins had just done King’s dirty work. The people who had orchestrated the London attacks were now all dead. Justice served. The architect, the financier, the fixer and the banker. Now all that remained was the triggerman. King wanted to keep things simple, and he had chosen the scenario because of his surroundings. The terrain was flat and with little cover so getting near Collins would be difficult. The city was well-policed and equipped with a world-leading CCTV system. Crime was low because the penalties were harsh. Killing Collins was one thing; getting away with it would be quite another. With these factors weighed up he had chosen to use a powerful enduro type motorcycle because of the ease in which he could get away either in traffic, on fast roads or over challenging terrain. When the time was right, he would pull out to calmly overtake, draw alongside and empty the eighteen-round magazine of the Caracal 9mm pistol through the window, ditch the weapon and never look back. He had no desire to look Collins in the eye as he pulled the trigger; no desire to have the last word. That sort of thing only ever looked good in the movies. A clean kill with no comeback was always the best option.

King started to accelerate. He would have to be quick, because when he drew the weapon and fired, he will have taken his hand off the throttle. To compensate for this, he would have to pull past the vehicle, draw and fire as he lost speed. Ahead of him, Collins remained in the slow lane, his speed at a constant seventy-miles-per-hour and no reason to change lanes as the overtaking lane was free of traffic. King opened his jacket a touch more, grateful for the air to circulate more freely. He had never used a Caracal before, but the United Arab Emirates designed 9mm pistol was in the same vein as a Glock or Steyr M, and King had found most the modern polymer framed pistols on the market to be as different from one another as either end of a loaf of bread. However, the Caracal had an unusual sight set up in that the rear sight was in fact situated in the forward third of the weapon’s frame, close to the foresight. As he had practised gripping and sighting the weapon in his hotel room, he had found it simple to aim and required little to no correction. Caracal seemed to have redesigned the wheel. He would have liked to have tested it out on a range, but that would have to keep for another time. When he pulled the trigger, he would be less than a metre from Collins and would not stop firing until the weapon was empty.

The motorcycle surged forwards and King’s heart was hammering against the wall of his chest as he pulled out to overtake. Checking his mirrors, he could see that vehicle behind him was a long way back. About a thousand metres. Ahead of them, a single lorry was trundling along in the righthand lane around six-hundred metres ahead of them. A slip road was coming up on the right and would provide King with a perfect exit as he left carnage in his wake. It wasn’t going to get any better than this, so King twisted the throttle and picked up more speed. As he drew alongside, readying himself to take his hand off the grip and reach for his weapon, the driver’s window blew out, showering King in fragments of glass and the muzzle flash burned brightly beside him. King hit the brakes, but Collins had anticipated his reaction and slammed hard on his brakes, too. The SUV remained beside him, and he felt bullets punch through the flap of his leather jacket and the searing pain of a bullet skimming his thigh. He could smell petrol, too. King dropped down two gears and twisted the throttle, the motorcycle surging ahead. Bullets zipped past his head and his right mirror smashed, but he ducked down and kept accelerating for the slip road. Fuel spilled over his legs, stinging the channel in his thigh that had been carved out by the bullet. The slip road was in fact a bridge access providing drivers with a route back to the city. King braked hard as he reached the bridge, but as he leaned low for the lefthand turn, fuel spilled onto the hot exhaust and ignited. He barely had time to straighten the machine when he was engulfed in flames. The sensation took him back to The Congo and the pilot of the helicopter he had been travelling in who had burned alive after they had crashed. His mentor Peter Stewart had shot the trapped pilot and put an end to his agony. It was a memory that would forever stay with King, and to this day he could not bring himself to eat roast pork for the memory of the man’s burning flesh which smelled the same. King let go of the handlebars and bailed out to the side. The motorcycle was in flames as it clipped the kerb and collided with the barrier. King rolled across the hot tarmac, extinguishing the flames, but aware that Collins would be gaining on him. When he came to rest on his back, he pulled the pistol from its holster underneath his jacket and took aim. The grille of the SUV came into view almost immediately as it rounded the corner, and King started to fire. Bullets sparked off the metal, but most of the bullets found their way into the engine and steam burst from the grille. King changed magazines and continued to fire, seeing Collins’ arm snaking out of the driver’s window with the silenced pistol in his hand. King fired until the weapon’s slide locked back, and the gun ran dry. He tossed the weapon aside and rolled away as the SUV veered across the road, clipped the kerb and ran into the barrier. The tread of the front tyre – its wheel powered by the four-wheel-drive axel – caught against the barrier and gained traction, sending the front of the vehicle into the air causing it to roll over. The vehicle spun in the air, landed on the passenger’s side close to King and slid down the road in a shower of sparks.

King got slowly and unsteadily to his feet and patted himself down. His jeans were smouldering, having melted before being extinguished, and he could feel his thighs raw under the sticky material. He was bleeding, too. The bullet had carved out a quarter-inch deep, four-inch-long channel to add to the collection of scars. But it looked like the fire had partially cauterised the wound, because it was pink and raw and sticky and the bleeding was slowing down. King grit his teeth as he battled the pain and limped his way towards the wreckage. As he approached the upturned vehicle, Collins was clambering out. He no longer held his weapon, and King caught hold of the man by his lapels, dragged him clear of the wreckage and positioned him so he could get the man into a rear-naked-choke-hold. He got his left elbow around the man’s neck and under his chin, then locked both arms tightly, but before he could lever and finish the grip, Collins threw his head backwards and broke King’s nose with a resounding crack.

King reeled backwards and Collins lunged at him, but King lifted a knee and caught the man in the face, breaking his nose with similar success. King had broken his nose half a dozen times in the boxing ring and as many times outside of it. He caught hold of it and twisted, resetting it with just a trickle of blood from his left nostril. Collins, by contrast, was a bleeder. He had managed to keep his nose intact over the years, and both nostrils streamed blood down his face and onto his chest.

“Bastard…” he muttered.

“That’s right.”

“Yeah, Stewart always said you were,” Collins sneered. “He said your mother was a whore, as well.”

King ripped open his jacket and tore it off, dropping it to the ground. “I know who I am, and what I am,” said King. “He told me you killed your own mother. It’s just a shame you didn’t kill her in childbirth…”

Collins smiled. “Well, it looks like words aren’t going to hurt either of us.”

King shrugged. “Nice face, by the way.”

Collins touched the blistering. “I got even with the son of a bitch…”

“I’ve heard enough talk, Collins. Do you mind if I kill you now?”

“Good luck. I was always better than you,” Collins said coldly.

“Yeah, I’m not sure who told you that…” King charged at him, ignoring the burning, the bleeding and the pain. He caught Collins off guard and powered a front kick into the man’s stomach, sending him staggering backwards. King followed, catching the man with a series of punches. Some were blocked, but most got through, and Collins grunted as King picked his way through the man’s guard and pounded his ribs, stomach and face. King utilised his left, hammering body-blows into the man’s liver – an excruciating pain that only boxers really knew – and pounding his right into the man’s jaw. Collins fell back against the barrier, still yet to deliver a blow, as King pounded him relentlessly. Collins was held up by the barrier and heaving for breath, but when King stepped back a pace before taking what he planned to be a final, killer blow, he noticed the knife in Collins’ right hand, blood dripping from the tip of the wicked-looking blade. Instinctively, he glanced down and saw that he was bleeding heavily from a stab wound to his abdomen.

“All that training…” Collins spat at him between ragged breaths. “And you still didn’t see through the smoke and mirrors…” King cupped his stomach, only now feeling the searing pain from the wound. When he looked at his fingers, they were covered in blood. “It looks like a bad one. But good for me,” Collins said gleefully. “A few minutes, not much more…” King glanced down at his side. Collins was right. There was a lot of blood. The man had got the better of him again. “After you went for that swim in Greece, I was expecting you to come after me again. But I suppose you knew that if you did, then I would beat you again. And keep beating you.” Collins paused, his confidence bolstered by the sight of so much blood running down King’s side, his leg and onto the ground where it had already started to clot of the hot tarmac. “I came back for you once,” he said with a sneer.

“It clearly didn’t do you any good,” King panted, the pain of the stab wound finally catching up with him.

“Oh, it did. Cornwall can be lovely at that time of year,” he said, taking pleasure in King’s look of confusion. “Met the wife, had a little chat. Still got the note?” A wave of nausea washed over King, and he struggled to stand. He stared at Collins, his cold eyes almost begging for a retraction that he knew would never come. “You might want to check it against her handwriting. I think I did a pretty good job, to be fair. Ever wonder why she killed herself lying naked on the marital bed? Ever wish that she could have taken care to cover herself? Strange, when you think about it…”

There were moments when King had found himself wishing that Jane had taken a different path. He had wished it almost every day. It had been a constant. Such thoughts often crept in during his loneliest hours, when regret and pain mingled with memories of her. He wondered if things might have turned out differently had he been there more, if he had been able to protect her from the burdens that ultimately proved too much. These reflections haunted King, a persistent ache that reminded him of the fragility of happiness and the irreversible nature of fate. Yet, none of those thoughts compared to the regret he felt over her abandoning her treatment. The idea that she had opted for the easy way out had always weighed heavily on him, gnawing at his conscience. Jane’s suicide had never truly made sense to King. She was always a fighter, someone who never backed down from a challenge. More than that, she had been a believer — someone who cherished life and embraced its possibilities. It was this unwavering belief in living that made her death by suicide so deeply troubling and difficult for King to accept.

As King attempted to speak, his words faltered. Overcome by disbelief and a profound sense of loss, he realised that the determination which had always driven him had suddenly vanished. In that moment, he felt utterly defeated, unsure of how to reclaim the fight that had defined him for so long.

“Argh, don’t cry, King. I’m not sure I could take it…” Collins laughed mockingly. “She didn’t want to die, but when she knew that it was inevitable, she sort of accepted it. She wasn’t naked when she died, of course. That was me. Nice touch, don’t you think? Would you like to know what her last words were?”

King closed his eyes, picturing Jane’s face. Her features were suddenly crystal clear, as if she was in front of him rather than a distant memory. It had pained him that in recent years he could barely conjure an image of her, but now it was as if she was standing here with him. He could almost feel her touching him, her warm, soft skin brushing against his own. King opened his eyes and felt the fight back inside him. He stepped forwards and Collins pushed himself away from the barrier and slashed the blade towards King’s face. King caught hold of the blade with his left hand and gripped it tightly, blood pouring from his clenched fist, but holding the knife firm. Collins hesitated a moment too long, staring at the blade in King’s grip, then looking him in the eyes, unable to comprehend what the man had just done. He tried to pull it free, but King’s grip was vice-like. Collins did not see the blow coming. King’s thumb, forefinger and middle finger powered into the man’s eye socket like the prongs of a trident, and he reeled backwards releasing a blood-curdling scream as he hit the barrier and was catapulted over the edge by his own bodyweight. King staggered forwards, looking over the edge of the rail, but Collins was nowhere to be seen. He turned and hobbled across the road to the other side of the bridge and could see a canvas-covered lorry trundling down the carriageway, Collins lying in the centre of the canvas roof writhing in pain.

King’s heart sank. Nobody deserved that degree of luck. The fall should have killed him. But now, he had gotten away. King cupped the stab wound with his left hand as he stared at the lorry making its way into the distance. Collins would live to fight another day. Luck had been with him. Or perhaps it hadn’t. King briefly looked at the eyeball in his hand before tossing it over the bridge onto the road below. No. Perhaps the man’s luck had finally run out. King had just scored a vicious blow. He would hunt Collins to the ends of the earth, and the next time they faced each other it would end with King standing over the man holding his still-beating heart.

Chapter Fifty-Four

Windsor

He was tired. More than just tired, he felt worn to the bone. Ramsay had felt this way before, but he had always managed to battle the fatigue. After the ‘incident’ he had succumbed to depression and anxiety but had clawed his way out of the murky quagmire because his overriding sense of duty and stubbornness kept nagging him that he wasn’t finished yet. He had been lucky. He was unaware that the service-approved therapist had noted Ramsay’s autism as a major factor in his recovery. His inability to give up on a task had in fact pulled him through. Some speculated that his return to work was too soon, but those who knew him well would have expected no less. Today, however, was a low mood day. King had returned from Saudi Arabia and reported that Richard Collins had escaped, and that meant that his number one asset would still be hell-bent on revenge. King had said little more and told him that he was taking a few weeks off and not to contact him until then. Ramsay has said that he would respect that, but he really wanted to hit the ground running. There were many challenges ahead of them, and having King focused on the country’s security was vital. The issue was the team’s loyalty to King. Caroline would aid King in any way she saw fit, and he knew deep down that the team only worked because they were a team. They would not ignore a team member, and until King had all his ducks in a row, then the entire team would be in limbo. And then there was Jack Luger. Eight hours of surgery and six blood transfusions later, and he had been wheeled out onto the ICU and deemed in the clear. He was now on the road to recovery. He had been lucky, and it was not without a little envy that Ramsay knew it could so easily have not been so. He had taken one bullet and would spend the rest of his days in a wheelchair. Luger had taken six bullets. Two to the left arm, four to the chest, but would make a full recovery within six months. But Ramsay could see it in the young man’s eyes that he was through. Lillia had flown over and spent days by his side. It was clear that she cared a great deal about him, and there was something in the young man’s eyes that had changed. Jack Luger was a highly valued asset in Ramsay’s opinion, but only time would tell if he could count on him in the future.

Arthur Wilber-Scott had proved invaluable once the team had returned to the UK. All charges had been dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service and Caroline’s record was clean. The prison escape had been passed off as a cutting-edge training exercise, and the Prison Service were re-evaluating prison grounds, and looking at mesh screening to not only prevent a helicopter escape happening in the future, but to help combat the supply of drugs, weapons and phones into prisons by drones.

Ramsay froze as he wheeled himself into the building. Something was wrong. He had known it the moment he wheeled himself over the threshold. Jim Kernow knew it too and stepped around him with his Glock 19 drawn.

“Wait here, boss, I’ll check it out…” Kernow said and peered through the open office doorway where only yesterday three secretaries had run the admin for the two offices below Ramsay’s. It was empty. No furniture, no hardware. Just carpet with indents where the legs of the desks and castors of chairs had once been. The plug sockets were empty, and the carpet had been vacuumed. But it wasn’t the empty space nor the heady aroma of bleach in the air that was unnerving – it was the all-encompassing silence.

Kernow took the stairs and checked the two offices of the men he did not know and had only seen in passing. He had assumed that they were agents or ‘officers’ doing the same work as their opposite numbers in MI5 and MI6, but his remit had been to both drive and assist Neil Ramsay in his duties, and act as the man’s bodyguard. He had known that ‘The Department’ was built upon being secretive, so he had not pried, not chatted at the coffee machine, had only known two of the secretaries’ names, which he was now doubting had been real. Because right now, as he climbed the stairs to the third floor, nothing seemed real at all.

Mae’s office area had been cleared, too. Kernow heard the chime of the lift and turned to see the doors open and Ramsay wheeling himself out into the bare foyer. Kernow holstered the Glock and pushed open Ramsay’s office door, already knowing what he would find. Except he was wrong. Only the desk remained, and on it, a bottle of champagne and an envelope.

“Boss…” he said quietly and held the door open for him.

Ramsay wheeled himself inside and stopped at the desk. He wasn’t a champagne drinker – had no interest in it – but he knew that Dom Perignon was a good brand. Had he known anything about vintage, then he would have known that the bottle had cost Arthur Wilber-Scott the high end of four figures, and if he had noted the year, then he would have seen that it was his birth year. He picked up the envelope, opened it and started to read:

My Dearest Neil,

‘The Department’s’ job is done. There has never been a desire to rule this nation’s intelligence services, merely the need to maintain the status quo, and protect them from outside influence. For over one-hundred years, MI5 and MI6 have co-existed. One to spy, and the other to hunt foreign spies. Over the years, their remit has often changed, or more accurately – evolved. The most recent evolution was that of your team. A single department under the umbrella of MI5, that was free from political influence and the risk of a security breach. This department, or unit, has been reinstated once more. The new director general of MI5 will be announced in the coming days, and they have instructions to appoint you as director. You will once more choose your team and a working office. I know this department or unit will be in capable, steady and just hands.

If I perform my duties properly, we should never cross paths again. Not by choice, but by necessity. I wish you luck, and happy hunting!

Faithfully,

Arty

Ramsay handed Jim Kernow the letter, who read with interest before saying, “I don’t get it. Is there even such an organisation as The Department?”

“Who knows?” Ramsay replied, a thin and rare smile pursing his lips. “Nobody has heard of them, no record anywhere. It could just be that the palace are well informed and the powers that be did not like the manipulation of the Security Service from the Prime Minister. Or it could be that they really are the most secretive intelligence service in existence.”

“And by the powers that be, you mean the King…”

“That will remain a mystery, Jim. I’m quite sure about that,” he replied, then took one last look around the abandoned office before wheeling himself outside. He had much to do, and a few calls to make before he could assemble his team. There were people who he wanted to learn more about. People who threatened the balance of power and the safety of the nation. He did not have time to contemplate anything else, and there was no time like the present.

Chapter Fifty-Five

Khao Lak, Thailand, Five Months Later

The oppressive heat made him itch underneath the eyepatch. The taxi driver had switched on an upright fan, and despite the building being nothing more than a roof set on concrete pillars and completely open on all sides, the circulation of air was welcome and had the desired effect. In front of Collins, two tables were laden with weapons and ammunition. There had been no safety checks, no insistence on seeing his passport or any other form of identification. All he had to do was book the taxi and the driver had done the rest. In Thailand, money talked.

There were five, 9mm handguns on the table. A Glock 19 and a Glock 17, a Sig Sauer P226, a Beretta 92FS, and a CZ-75. There was also a Smith and Wesson .357 magnum revolver and an old school Colt 1911 .45 from the nineteen-eighties. At the far end of the table an M4 carbine with three-shot-burst – full military spec – rested on top of a fabric case. The weapons man had asked if Collins had fired a gun before and he had simply nodded. He had loaded three rounds into a Glock 19, handed it to Collins to fire at a paper target fifteen metres away, and when he recognised that he had known what he was doing, he had calmly walked off to sit and talk to the taxi driver leaving Collins to get on with it.

Saudi Arabia now seemed a lifetime ago. After falling from the bridge onto the passing truck, Collins had passed out from the pain and knowledge that he had lost an eye. At first it had taken many minutes to work out why he could not see, and it wasn’t until he had felt around the eye socket, probed a finger inside, that he realised what that bastard King had done to him. Strangely, it had not been agonising, in fact, he had dealt with the pain within an hour – after all, his eye was no longer there to feel pain and the nerve receptors had been shut down by his own body - but the psychological damage had been devastating. He had spent many months at his lowest ebb, only driven forwards by anger and resentment, and the knowledge that he would one day exact his revenge.

Collins had used caches of money and forged papers to leave the Middle East via the United Arab Emirates where he took a merchant vessel to India and a flight to Malasia, before heading north to Thailand by train, ferry and bus. He had no contacts, caches or accounts in Thailand, but he had perfect anonymity. He had grown out his hair and concealed the eyepatch with a pair of sunglasses. In addition to his bohemian makeover, he had grown a beard to conceal his facial burns. He was in no doubt that he would get even with the young man who had burned him – and whom he had since discovered survived his injuries - and he barely went an hour without thinking about the painful end he would mete out upon King. But that could all keep for now. Thailand provided him with a cheap place to live amongst both locals and tourists alike. He did not look out of place among the travellers who flocked to the region and stayed for months at a time, and he had rented a small prefabricated one bedroomed property near Coconut Beach where he could swim and run and work on his fitness. Adjusting to losing his eye had taken time. King being the bastard he was, had ripped out his right eye – his dominant eye – and it had taken time to adjust how he lived, even down to performing the most mundane of tasks. Today was about shooting and learning to use his left eye. It was complex to master, and the only way he could do so was to switch to shooting left-handed. Of course, Peter Stewart had insisted that he practice this in case of losing the use of his right arm, but now that it was the only way he could use a weapon, he needed to fine tune and hone this new skill. The weapons man – because Collins could in no way consider him an instructor as he chatted and smoked with the taxi driver – would be a useful, if not necessary contact. For the equivalent of fifty pounds, the man had provided a gun and fifty-rounds of ammunition. Collins had opted for three-hundred rounds of mixed ammunition, and the man had thrown in the guns to choose from. He had thought he would use the man a few more times to get the practice he needed, and thoroughly scout out the facility, which was a fifty-metre range also used by the Thai police. He did not yet know whether the weapons man was a police officer earning extra cash on the side, or whether he was simply a member of the range. Either way, when the time was right it could not be simpler. He would load two pistols to capacity – because you never knew when a weapon would fail to operate – and he would turn around and shoot both men in the head. He would then have two vehicles to choose from in which to escape, and he would have a military-issue rifle, many pistols and, from what he had seen inside the truck when the weapons man had unloaded, enough ammunition to start and win a small war. He had booked the taxi in person, paid in cash been picked up in Khao Lak main street near the Bang Niang market. In fact, as Collins loaded the Glock 17, the more sense it made to make his move now. The next time he came there could be more tourists shooting, or the police practicing on the range, and if King caught up with him in Thailand, then he would need protection. He could always drive into the countryside and practice his new shooting style without the need for a range. Collins glanced over his shoulder at the two men, on their second cigarettes and smiling at what he assumed was a joke. Two men, ten feet away from him. He looked above him and to his left and right. No cameras. He hadn’t noticed any on the way in, either. Collins loaded another magazine and made the Glock 19 ready. This model had a safety, and he had never seen one on a Glock before. He didn’t like it, found that it was easy to engage ‘safe’ when the weapon recoiled. Still, there was more than enough weapons to choose from later.

Collins rested the Glock 19 on the table for back-up, then readied the Glock 17 in his hands and took a deep breath before turning around and smiling at the men and savouring the shock and desperate realisation on the faces of the two men as he aimed and fired.

Author’s Note

King’s next adventure is Crossfire .

Hi - thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed my story!

I’m hard at work on another thriller and hope to entertain you again soon. In the meantime, you can find all my titles here: www.apbateman.com

Happy reading!

A P Bateman