Flight Path: A Wright & Tran Novel (8 page)

“Now what?” Jaco
b
asked from one of the chairs in Amberley’s living room. Kara and Tien shared a threadbare couch that sagged opposite a small fireplace. A forlorn 1970’s three-bar electric fire gazed back at them, woefully attempting to heat the room.

“We’ll have to go on what we’ve got,” Kara answered.

“Which is not much,” Tien said.

“No, but short of tearing his eyes out and cutting his hands off, he’s not giving anything else up,” Kara said and then paused as she registered that Jacob’s complexion was pale. “Are you alright?”

He gave a brief half-smile and nodded, “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m just relieved you didn’t actually do anything to him. I’m not sure I could have held him.”

“Jesus, Jacob, did you really think-” she stopped herself, aware that she had sounded angry. It wasn’t Jacob’s fault. Kara hadn’t briefed him on how far she would take the questioning and this was the first time he’d been on the inside of any of their jobs. On reflection, his question wasn’t out of place. She tempered her tone, “I’m sorry. I should have explained more. Despite what the papers might have you believe, that’s not how we’re trained to get information as interrogators. The trick is to make it all possible in the subject’s mind. They’ll imagine much, much more horrendous things than we could actually do. You let them believe what you want them to believe but no, I don’t do torture. I was in the same Service as you Jacob, not the Gestapo.”

“I’m glad,” he said, “And relieved. I mean it, I’m not sure I could have managed that.”

“Good,” said Tien. “I wouldn’t be happy with you if you could.”

Kara noticed a distinct brightening of the young man’s disposition at the compliment.

“But,” Tien continued, “We still have the problem of what now?”

“We need to get Amberley babysat,” Kara said. “We can’t just leave him here to his own devices, but that shouldn’t be too much of a hassle. It might take a while to sort out and that’s no bad thing. We’ll need some time to get our own logistics in order.”

“Do I assume we’re off on a trip?” Tien asked.

“Oh I think so. Not sure there are going to be many tulips to tiptoe through in November, but we’ll give it a go,” Kara looked between Tien and Jacob. “One thing we need to remember though. Francis Amberley is less scared of what we will do to him if he doesn’t talk, than what would happen to him if he does. We don’t know why Derek Swift left, but it’s one hell of a secret that buys the absolute silence of a timid little man who thought his eyeball was about to be corkscrewed out.”

ɸ

Kara was right about it taking some time to set things up. Her initial phone call was quick, but putting things into place took the rest of the night. As Franklyn called others within the circles he had access to, Kara and Tien went back to their accommodation, saying hello to the indomitable Daphne as they passed back through the bar area.

“Did you find what you were looking for dear?” Daphne asked, her sing-along Suffolk accent returned to the fore.

Kara was aware the old woman had asked in such a way as to maintain discretion in the lightly populated bar.

“Yes thank you Daphne, we did.” Kara smiled and winked over at her.

“Shall I send you something to your rooms, or would you like to eat in here?”

“Our rooms would be great. What’s on offer?”

“Shepherd's Pie and trimmings, dear. Would have been a lot more, but the night’s getting on. Shall I send three?”

“Two’s okay, but if you could leave one over for our colleague. He’ll be back later.”

“I’ll plate it up for him. There’s a microwave in the small kitchen in between your rooms. I’m sure he’ll be able to use that, won’t he? A big strong boy like that.”

Kara laughed as she neared the door that led out to the converted barn accommodation, “I’m sure he will Daphne, although I doubt he’s been called a big strong boy for some time.”

“Perhaps not, dear. But he’s bigger and stronger than some. I hope he’s okay?” the elderly woman called after them.

Kara and Tien were fully aware of the question that had been asked.

“He’s fine Daphne. Everyone’s fine, thanks,” Tien said.

“As long as you’re sure dear?”

“As sure as a Hackney girl can be.”

Daphne held Tien’s gaze for a brief moment before smiling broadly and turning to serve another customer.

ɸ

It took a couple of hours for Franklyn to come back to them with an agreed plan and quite a few more to get the assets in place. By then Kara, Tien and Jacob had rotated the watch on Amberley a number of times. They could have taken shorter stints, but the look Kara had caught on Amberley’s face gave her no inclination to leave Tien alone with the man. She couldn’t explain it and hadn’t even tried. Her friend would have been furious if she had thought Kara was doubting her ability to keep the man subdued. Nonetheless, Kara hadn’t left her on her own. During their non-guarding stints, they verified as much as they could about Dutch trollers.

Now, both women and Jacob were back in the small dining room of the Victorian terrace, with Amberley once more tied to the chair. In the intervening hours they had cleaned up the floor and allowed him to shower, change, eat and drink, all of which he did in a submissive state, offering no resistance. Now the panicked look had returned to his face. He sat with his head down and his eyes locked on Kara. The only noise was the electronic tick of a wall clock in the kitchen.

“You said you were going to let me go?” he said, a pronounced tremor to his voice. 

“I lied. Now be quiet,” Kara said and checked her watch.

“I suppose you lied about the insurance money too?” he said, pouting.

“Seriously Francis? You have to ask? Of course I lied. Now be quiet or I’ll reapply the tape over your mouth and extend it to cover your nose.” Kara rechecked her watch. It was one minute past three in the morning. A further minute dragged by. Then another. The door knocker that she had used almost eight hours before, sounded twice. It had been rapped softly yet the noise cannoned off the walls of the small house. Amberley and the chair both jumped a few inches clear of the floor. He let out a small moan of terror.

“We’ll be going now Francis. Thank you for your help, or lack of,” Kara said.

Amberley’s face was still flushed from the shock of the sound of the knocker. He tried to stammer something but stopped when he heard a key turning in the front door.

“It’s okay Francis, I put your door key into the lock. Your new guests are just letting themselves in.”

Kara, Tien and Jacob walked past him, out the back door and into the small rear garden. As they climbed over the fence and back on to the narrow road, four plainclothes police officers made their way down the narrow hallway and into the dining room. They secured Francis Amberley, led him out of the house and into a waiting, unmarked van. The Woodbridge Police Station had ample facilities to secure a prisoner and was only a mile away, but the van didn’t go there. Neither did it go to the Regional Police Headquarters less than half an hour away.

Amsterdam, Holland. Thursday, 19
th
November.

Trains from Schipho
l
Airport to the Gothic-Renaissance splendour of Amsterdam’s ‘Centraal’ railway station took twenty minutes. Another ten minutes and a taxi, having negotiated the narrow streets, tight turns and unending swell of cyclists, deposited Kara, Tien and Jacob outside a rental apartment next to the Keizersgracht.

Tien gazed up at the buildings lining the banks of the canal, their height dwarfing the British idea of three or four-storey construction. The older townhouses were easily identified by their narrowing roofs and what looked like pulleys and hooks suspended from above the topmost windows. She took in trams, cyclists and cars sharing the same relatively narrow piece of road that was squeezed into a space begrudgingly sacrificed by the gently flowing water. The scent of a roadside flower stall, with hundreds of bouquets and thousands of blooms spilling onto the surrounding pavement, fragranced the street, giving the dulled, late-Autumnal day a fresh, spring-like aroma.

As the taxi departed and Kara made her way to the apartment’s door, Jacob asked, “Are you okay Tien?”

She spoke over her shoulder, “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s stunning though, isn’t it?”

“Haven’t you been here before?” he asked, coming to stand beside her.

“No, never. Not sure why not, considering how little time it took to get here,” she said checking her watch. It showed 3:00pm. “I mean we only left for Heathrow at ten and we’ve lost an hour to a time zone change. I could’ve easily been spending weekends here. Look at it. It’s amazing.”

Jacob laughed. “You’ve seen a few streets and a canal. Easily impressed much?”

“Not really. Not usually,” she said, turning to him, and aware that she was smiling broadly. “I suppose, it’s just that feeling you get sometimes. You know, when you go somewhere and you instantly know it’s an amazing place. That it just fits you. Know what I mean?”

Jacob nodded, “I felt that way about Toronto. I went over with the QCS once. Liked it so much I went back on holiday the same summer. Reckon I’ll end up there if I can manage it.”

“QCS?” Tien asked.

“The Queen’s Colour Squadron. We did the ceremonial drill displays for the Air Force?”

“Oh right,” she said, “The ones that do it all with no words of command. Very impressive.”

Jacob dipped his head in acknowledgment of her compliment, “Thanks. It was fun doing it.”

As Tien watched a tram making its near-silent way along the street she said, almost as an afterthought, “I thought you were a proper field gunner.”

“We were proper gunners too,” Jacob said, too quickly and with a hint of sternness in his voice.

Tien turned back to him and with a warm smile put her hand on his arm, “Oops, my mistake. I didn’t mean to offend. So you did that
and
all the normal stuff?”

Jacob reddened under her gaze. “Yeah, we were a field regiment too.”

“That’s how you ended up in Afghanistan?” Tien asked.

Jacob nodded.

Tien saw the same look in his eyes at the mention of that far-away country that she sometimes saw in her own reflection. She took his hand, “Come on, let’s go see where Kara has booked us into. I don’t normally let her online with a credit card.”

Jacob didn’t resist and allowed himself to be led across to the narrow black door that Kara had already knocked on. It opened to reveal a round-faced man, with an even rounder stature. He had the complexion of a shined apple. Sweat was beaded on a forehead barely visible under a riot of dishevelled jet-black hair, and even though his Mexican-styled moustache drooped downwards, Tien desperately wanted to call him Mario. When she realised that he held a large monkey-wrench in his left hand she almost laughed out loud. ‘I love this place,’ she thought. The man spoke with the peculiar Dutch accent that gave a lisp to his pronunciation of English.

“Good afternoon, you must be the London people, the Wrights, yes?” he asked, wiping his right hand on his jeans and offering it to Kara.

“Yes, good afternoon,” she said shaking the chubby hand.

“Please come in. It is so nice of you to be choosing us for your stay in Amsterdam,” he said, turning and leading them into a tiny hallway. Jacob remained outside and allowed Tien to step into the tight space.

“I am Bernard, the caretaker.”

Tien managed to suppress a sigh. ‘You’ll always be Mario to me,’ she thought.

“I’m just glad we could get it so quickly,” Kara said, oblivious to her friend’s amusement.

“Oh yes, well it is November so we have vacancies sometimes more than in the summer,” Bernard said reaching into a small rack of letter pigeonholes and drawing out a set of two keys. He held each up in turn, “This is for the door to the apartment on the third floor and this is for the street door. You are staying three nights, yes?”

“Yes, although we might extend if we need to. Is that okay?” Kara asked, taking the offered keys.

“Oh yes. It is fine. As long as you are letting me know. We have no booking for another two weeks, so if you want you can stay all that time,” he said and then added, “Do you have any questions?”

Kara shook her head, “No Bernard, I think that’s it. Thank you.”

He raised the wrench slightly, “Well if you will be allowing me, I must continue. I am changing a piece of the heating. So you will be warm in the cold nights. It is nice to meet you. Goodbye.” He made for the door at the end of the tiny hall and was almost through it before Tien called out.

“Ma- I mean Bernard, is there Wi-Fi?”

The rosy-cheeked caretaker spun lightly on his feet. Tien almost applauded. “Oh yes. We have the fast Wi-Fi. All the details are in the welcome pack on the table in the apartment.” He gave a cheery wave with the wrench and went out through the door.

Kara led them to the stairwell in the corner of the hall.

“Flipping heck,” Tien said as she began to climb up, “I’m glad we only have small backpacks. Imagine trying to get suitcases up this.” She looked vertically down to where Jacob was following behind and giggled at the sight that greeted her. “You doing okay?”

Jacob, each shoulder brushing the side of the narrow stairwell stopped, not trusting his ability to look upwards whilst finding the next sliver of stair that climbed and twisted at an acute angle. “Yeah, I’m good. Lucky you’re not wearing a skirt,” he said with a cheeky smile.

“You wish,” Tien laughed, and even in the semi-dark of the stairs she saw Jacob go crimson.

Despite them being fit and athletic, they were all out of breath by the time Kara opened the door to the apartment.

“Wow! It’s like the Tardis,” Tien said as she stepped into an open-plan kitchen and sitting room. Three large windows marked the fact that the apartment held the corner most position of the building. “Those stairs really twist around,” she said, moving to look out and reorient herself. The flower stall, the canal and the Hotel Armada on the opposite bank were visible through the kitchen and adjacent sitting room windows. The other sitting room window looked out west along the length of the canal. The sun was already slipping down into a grey, washed out version of a sunset.

Two further stairwells, equally narrow and steep, came off the sitting room. One led back down to half of the building’s second floor where the apartment claimed three bedrooms and a bathroom. The other stairs led up to two more bedrooms and a second bathroom. In total the apartment’s lease claimed it could accommodate ten, although that supposed a level of intimacy with regard to some of the sleeping arrangements. Modestly, with one of the five bedrooms having three single beds, it could accommodate seven.

Within half an hour Tien had sorted out Wi-Fi access, set up her laptops and was preparing a set of smartphones for use. Seven of them were laid out on the table. One by one she registered the corresponding speed dial numbers into each. Then, using skills acquired while working for a few weeks in the Covent Garden Apple Store, she opened the casing of each phone. A small micro-battery and GPS tracking module, no bigger than her little fingernail, was slipped into a tiny gap under the main CPU. The space looked like it had been left for exactly that purpose, but Tien knew the inventors of the tiny tracker had exploited a quirk of the iPhone’s manufacture. It was an ingenious design and one they’d been keen to promote at the device’s unveiling a few months before.

The miniaturisation of cameras, microphones and trackers was a boon to Tien’s profession, but the explosion of companies, especially within London, offering gadgets like they were some Q-division out of James Bond, made her wince. She wasn’t wholly convinced that secret-camera devices, made to look like alarm clocks and pens, weren’t being used by seedy, voyeuristic guesthouse owners, or worse. The problem was, that as a registered Private Investigation firm, ‘Wright and Tran’ were contacted on at least a weekly basis to evaluate what was on offer. Mostly they said no. Politely, but no nonetheless.

The request to see the tracker had come from a new shop called ‘Thy Chela’ in Knightsbridge. Tien had been intrigued, not least by its name, but by its location. At one hundred yards from Harrods, the new enterprise was likely to be backed by some significant players. Her tech-head also figured that such a device, self-powered and capable of operating even if the main battery was taken from the phone, was worth the trek to the west of the city. When she found out that it could also be monitored through commercial satellite systems, she and Kara had decided to buy a dozen of them. Tien didn’t mind spending some of their newly acquired wealth on that type of purchase.

She also hadn’t objected too much at spending money on her new lower arm and hand. Prior to the Bebionic model, there was no way she could have manipulated the phones, the screwdriver, the casings and the trackers without a mounting frustration and ultimately having to ask for help. Now, with a simple flick of a sensor within the socket of her arm, she could select the grip she needed, and with a twist, she could move her wrist to any angle. She had become so adept that she could swing her hand against her thigh to quickly switch thumb positions. It was true that Tien had been reticent when she found out the cost, but Kara had insisted that she buy it and it had been worth every penny. Recently some people hadn’t realised she had a prosthesis at all. The skin tone match on the ‘glove’ that covered the futuristic hand was an indistinguishable match for her real skin. Although, one of her young nephews had been disappointed she hadn’t kept a more terminator-type look.

Tien had quickly come to love her new arm. Every time she looked at it, every time she used it, she felt the loss of her original limb a little less. She hadn’t had to ask for help with any task in months and the value of that happiness and independence was immeasurable. The strength and capability of the prosthesis had even allowed her to get back into attending the gym and she especially loved how she could do push-ups with it.

Flicking her fingers to a tripod-grip, she reassembled the last of the phones, finishing just as Kara and Jacob returned from a quick shopping expedition. While Kara showered, Jacob put the supplies to good use and made tea, toast and scrambled eggs.

As they were finishing their meal, Tien’s phone rang. “Hi, yep,” she said and rose to look out the kitchen window at two cars pulling into the apartment’s designated parking spots. “Black door just behind you,” she said and disconnected before looking over to Kara and Jacob. “They’re here.”

ɸ

Samantha Davis, known as Sammi, and Charles Randal, known as Chaz, looked like the perfect couple. Sammi stood five foot ten inches, her broad shoulders and slim waist a fitting testament to her love of swimming. Her height, physique, blue eyes and shoulder-length mousey-blonde hair complimented the short, light brown hair and blue eyes of Chaz’s six foot, lithe body. Sammi moved with a casual sway and Chaz, two years her senior, moved with what seemed the grace of a dancer, but was actually the result of decades of training in martial arts. The couple’s obvious compatibility had been a great cover for their many covert surveillance operations. In reality, their relationship was strictly confined to work. Although once, a long, long time ago, they had tried to sleep together in a drunken haze. That night, a singularly shared secret, never revealed to anyone, had ended with them laughing at each other in their naked awkwardness. They’d resolved then and there to be like brother and sister as opposed to lovers. It was that underpinning stability which allowed them to be so effective.

Kara had first worked with Sammi and Chaz back in 2006, a few months after the tour in Iraq when she had met Tien. Three years later, they had all worked together, along with James ‘Dinger’ Bell and Aidy ‘Taff’ Jones, in Afghanistan.

Shortly after that tour, Sammi and the three guys, who were always referred to as Sammi’s crew, left the military and joined the world of freelance consultants. As the O’Neill brothers were always Kara and Tien’s first choice for security, so Sammi and Chaz were their first call if they needed reliable, specialist intelligence back-up. Taff and Dinger had operated as Sammi’s embedded security team, until December 2014 when Taff was killed in a mortar attack in Kabul. Since then, Sammi and her crew had tried to confine themselves to less hazardous locations and take life easier.