Greed (27 page)

Sallum nodded, holding the attache case tightly in his hand, and walked back towards his car.

Of all the missions fate has chosen out for me, this is surely the greatest. Each man reaches his own moment of destiny, and this is mine.

Matt put the phone down, then slammed his fist against the wall. A section of plaster shook loose, sending a cloud of dust into the air. 'The bitch!' he snarled. 'The two-timing, double-crossing bitch.'

'What did she say?' asked Ivan.

The two men had walked back in silence, both of them chewing on their kebabs. Matt had hardly eaten all day, but the food failed to make him feel any better. The anger was growing inside him all the time. It was not just that she was responsible for the deaths of two of his Regimental comrades and his oldest and closest friend. It was that she had turned all that responsibility on to him. Were it not for him, none of them would have been on the mission – and all the time she had been setting them up for assassination.

As soon as they'd got back to the safe house Matt had put a call through to Pointer. He needed the answer to the question he had put to the man earlier: what happened to the video link Alison's MI5 stooge had put into Kazanov's house?

'Shot out,' Matt said, looking back up towards Ivan, 'according to Pointer – and he's got no reason to he to me. The guy who killed Reid went into the video room and shot the whole place to pieces. He's obviously enough of a professional to know everything would be taped, and he didn't want to leave any evidence behind him.'

Ivan put down the coffee he had just finished brewing. 'Before or after he shot Reid – that's the question,' he said. 'I reckon it has to be afterwards. Think about it. You go inside the house, knowing that Reid has been distracted, and you have a few minutes to kill the wife and kids before killing him. You don't have time to worry about the video cameras.'

Matt poured himself some coffee. 'Right – you deal with it after the killing is done. So long as none of the tape survives, you know it doesn't matter. Would it occur to you that the whole lot was being transmitted back to London?'

'So that's what the Five man was there for,' said Ivan. 'You should have seen that at the time. It was nothing to do with helping you. Alison knew all along the assassin was going to come and get Reid. She just wanted to make sure they had film of him, so they could identify him later. It all fits together.'

'Like a game of bridge.'

'Right. She gets us to hit al-Qaeda,' Ivan said carefully. 'She knows they are going to send their best man after us. She finds some way of leaking who and where we are, knowing their man will go after us. Meanwhile Five are watching, waiting for one slip – then they have him. She didn't care about the robbery, not for a moment. It's the assassin she's after.'

'Christ, I'll tell you why as well,' said Matt. 'She's under a lot of pressure to catch the guy who killed the government minister in Saudi. And she reckons there's a big al-Qaeda spectacular coming up soon in Britain. Five are desperate for some kind of lead.'

'How do you know what she thinks?'

'I slept with her,' said Matt. 'Pillow talk.'

'Not just you, me as well,' said Ivan.

Matt paused. With all that he'd learned in the past few minutes this revelation shouldn't have surprised him – yet he couldn't help but see it as yet another betrayal. It hadn't been serious with Alison, but he hadn't expected her to be both trying to get him killed
and
sleeping with the rest of the gang.

'And I'll tell you what then, pal,' Ivan said, a hoarse laugh rising from his lips, 'it wasn't either of us that screwed her. It was the other way around!'

'Alison here.'

'It's Matt.'

She paused for only a fraction of a second. 'Are you OK?' she said quickly. 'I was really worried about you.'

She's good, thought Matt. The tone, the pause, the small catch in her throat. You could almost believe she really was worried about me.

Like a whore, she knows how to fake any emotion the moment requires.

'You heard about Reid?'

'Yes. I'm really sorry. He was a good guy.'

Matt held the phone tightly. He was sitting in the hallway of the Hammersmith house, his back to the wall. Only one light bulb was on shining in the kitchen, otherwise the house was in darkness. 'The Five man who put in the video link – did you get anything?'

Another pause. 'No,' she replied. 'The first thing the assassin must have done is shot it out.'

Matt nodded into the phone. 'Nothing at all? Not even a few shots of him coming into the compound?'

'No. I'm sorry, Matt. Nothing.'

'OK,' said Matt. 'I was just hoping it might have given us some kind of lead.'

'Whoever he is, he's too good to make a mistake like that,' she said. 'Did you get the money?'

'That's all taken care of,' said Matt. 'We'll be making the split just like we discussed in Bideford.'

'Is there anything I can do to help?'

'Listen, I'm hiding up with Ivan now. I think you should know where I am staying, just in case anything happens to me.'

'Don't talk like that, Matt – you'll be OK.'

'No, I have to be sensible. Three of the gang are dead, and I might be next. If anything happens to me, I'd like you to make sure the money is picked up and goes to my heirs. The Regiment will tell you who the money should go to. We all have to give details of who we want to leave our stuff to, and I haven't changed mine.' He paused, looking across at Ivan and smiling. 'I'm going to send you a text with all the details.'

'All right,' she said softly. 'You look after yourself, Matt. If there's anything we can do to help, just let me know.'

'We're big strong boys,' said Matt. 'We can look after our corner of the playground.'

He cut the call, walked to the kitchen to retrieve his mobile, and started tapping in the details of his address. He pressed send and waited until he knew the text had been sent. 'Well, now she knows where we are,' he said, looking across at Ivan. 'And where we are going as well.'

Ivan smiled. 'I remember when I was still a teenager,' he said, 'when I first signed up with the Provos there was an old guy called Mickey Royle who took me under his wing and showed me some of the ropes. He taught me lots of lessons about survival – but the first one he taught me was this: let the enemy come to you.' He rocked back on his chair, a casual smile on his lips. 'When you go to them, you make yourself vulnerable. You move about, you expose yourself. Much better just to let the opponent come to you. That way you fight on your own territory.'

'I know,' Matt said, smiling. 'I've been one of those targets, remember.'

Sallum stared at the ceiling of the hotel room. In his mind he was reciting verses from the Koran, playing them over and over, drawing strength from the majesty and power of the words of the prophet.

The moment when my soul can be joined with his in heaven. That is what I am working for.

There are many moments of solitude in the professional life of the assassin, and Sallum had grown used to them over the years. When he was by himself, as he was for most of the time, he liked to pray and to study the Koran, cleansing his spirit and his mind afresh for each kill. At night, when he lay the holy book aside, he found himself thinking of his childhood, back in the Saudi wilderness. He was one of twenty children by his father's eight different wives. Although his father had so many different children he could scarcely keep count of them, his mother Saja had not been very fertile, and Nasir had been her only son. His father had quickly lost interest in her – in the hierarchy of his harem she had ranked right at the bottom. He'd showed little interest in Nasir as well, but to his mother he was the only pleasure in an otherwise harsh and disappointing life. She had always been at his side, his constant companion through all his adolescent years, and he still prayed for her and spoke to her every day. It was only after she had died that he had joined the movement. Allah had been the only person he could imagine who could fill his mother's place in his life.

If father could see me now, he would be proud of me. He would know that I am doing his work. He would not ignore me and insult my mother, the way he always did in the past.

The phone rang twice before Sallum answered it. 'Hammersmith, west London – that's where you'll find the last two thieves,' said Assaf. 'Do you know it?'

'What address?'

'Cedar Road,' said Assaf. 'Number sixteen.'

'Allah shall guide us at all times,' said Sallum.

For a moment he thought about the woman who had interviewed him at Manchester airport. Maybe she had realised who he was. Maybe she was trailing him. Maybe this was all a set-up: the next two victims could be planning an ambush. He pushed the thoughts out of his mind. Not helpful, he told himself.

I
will do my duty, no matter what the risks to myself

He rested his head against the pillow. His eyes were starting to shut, and he could feel a sense of calm and peace washing over him as he drifted off to sleep. The cares and anxieties of the day had vanished into the air, and he was able to relax.

It is so much easier for a man to sleep properly at night when he knows who he is going to kill in the morning.

Observation – the first and most important skill the assassin learns. Unless you have surveyed every inch of the ground you are going to attack, all your weapons and your tactics are useless.

I look, I study, and only then do I strike.

Sallum had walked twice down Cedar Road now. He moved swiftly, with his head down, and changed his overcoat in the car before returning: if anyone was watching, he wanted to make sure he didn't draw any attention to himself. He glanced at number sixteen through the corner of his eye, using the few seconds available to memorise every inch of the building. It was a typical Victorian terraced house, built on two floors, probably with a cellar, and another room in the loft. There was no entry at the sides, and although the front door would come away easily enough under sustained gunfire, it was likely to be well defended.

They are trained soldiers, and they are expecting me. They won't die without a struggle.

Sallum walked on. Dusk was falling, and there were only a few people on the streets. Ash Road ran parallel to Cedar, another row of Victorian terraces, most of them bought up and modernised over the past few years – they all had expensive looking cars outside, and flash new kitchens inside. He walked along the street, counting out each house. Number twenty-two, unless he had made a mistake in his calculations, backed directly on to number sixteen. Unlucky, thought Sallum surveying the ordinary-looking house. But your number is up.

Sallum walked on, allowing himself one more glance over the house. If there were three or four men in there, he had a problem. He headed back towards the car, got in, and pulled out the laptop he kept under the back seat. Hooking up the computer to the mobile phone, he fired up a web connection, then logged on to the electoral roll site used by junk mail companies to compile their mailshots. You needed a password to get in, but Sallum had already signed up for a subscription using a false password.

He tapped the Ash Road house's details into the computer. The information was transmitted down the line, and the answer took almost a minute to appear on the screen. Mrs Westhoff, plus a Celia Westhoff, described as a minor. A mother and a daughter – maybe a divorcee.

She will offer little resistance.

Sallum snapped the computer shut and walked briskly down the road. There was one other person walking along the street, and he waited for them to pass before making his move. He rang once on the doorbell, fingering the P7 in the palm of his hand.

The woman who answered the door looked to be in her early forties, with brown hair tied up behind her head, a loose looking dress, and no shoes. 'Electricity meter,' said Sallum sharply, taking a pace inside the hallway, half-closing the door behind him.

People judge you by your appearance, Sallum reminded himself. So long as you wear new, clean clothes, are clean shaven and smell of soap, they usually trust you. She was wary, but not so wary as to slam the door in his face. 'Your card?' she said, looking at him suspiciously.

He took another pace into the hallway, and dug into his pocket as if searching for his wallet. Then he swung the P7 up and jabbed the barrel of the gun into her forehead. He squeezed the trigger twice, the two bullets smashing through her skull. She dropped to the floor, her knees buckling beneath her. A trickle of blood seeped from the back of her head, draining into the blue carpet mat stretched from the hall to the kitchen at the back.

Sallum slammed the door shut, then held the gun up, ready for anybody who might be coming down the stairs to see what had happened. He counted to twenty, then tucked the gun back into his pocket.

At least she was alone, he thought to himself as he stepped over the body. He had executed several children already this week, and he was starting to tire of it. They whimpered and screamed and wriggled. They didn't know what death was.

Throwing two bolts across the front door, Sallum checked first the kitchen, then the first floor. The master bedroom gave the best view of the houses behind. The neatly trimmed lawn of this house backed on to a wooden fence, then the gardens of Cedar Road. Number sixteen's was a tangled mess of weeds, a few metres of scruffy lawn, a rusted swing, and a huge pile of black plastic rubbish bags.

I imagine the woman I have just killed despaired of the way the neighbours behind keep their garden.

From the kit bag slung over his back, Sallum took out a Hensoldt 6 X 42 sniper rifle sight. The German-manufactured sight, as well as being one of the most expensive telescopic sights in the world, was the only one that fitted the Heckler & Koch PSG-1 sniper rifle that Sallum preferred for shooting at distance. He held the Hensoldt to his right eye. At up to six hundred metres it gave perfect vision; it was less than fifty metres to the house opposite, and he could see straight in. One light was burning in what he took to be the kitchen, and another was visible on the first floor. Scanning the other windows, he couldn't make out any sign of movement.

Never mind, he told himself. They will be there soon.

The smell rose from the body as if it were an open sewer: a harsh, putrid stench of decaying flesh, sweaty clothes and unwashed hair. The skin had started to turn grey, and the limbs were showing signs of softening.

He had seen enough of them in his time, but Matt had never grown used to the scent of a corpse.

'Let's get him upstairs,' said Ivan.

A clump of hair came off in Matt's hand as he grabbed Whitson's head. He cast it aside, lifted the corpse by the shoulders from under the floorboards, and started climbing the stairs. Ivan took the legs and lifted the body clear of the ground. They stopped on the first floor landing, propping Whitson up against the wall. His head slumped forward and one of his eyes fell open. 'The trick is to make him look alive,' said Ivan. 'Back home we used to pull this one regularly on the Army. Get a corpse, make him look like a live one, let the soldiers think they've shot him, and when they come over to inspect the body, you blow them up.' Ivan chuckled. 'Worked like a dream.'

Matt glanced down at Whitson's corpse: he looked like a stiff, and a badly decaying one at that. 'Christ, even when he was alive this bloke looked half-dead.'

'Wash him up, and put some powder on his cheeks, that will freshen him,' said Ivan. 'At a distance, he'll look alive. When you're about to shoot a man, you don't spend a lot of time checking how well he's looking.'

The barrel of the Heckler & Koch PSG-1 would have been just visible at the first floor window: an inch of black metal emerging from a circular hole cut into the glass. The rifle was mounted on a black metal frame that held it perfectly still. Behind it, Sallum stood completely motionless, the lights all switched off around him, his eye level with the Hensoldt sight.

Sallum had played out the sequence of events a hundred times in his head: his preparation was always immaculate, and it was only through constant mental and physical training that he felt certain he could always claim victory over the odds. He would wait here until one of the two men in the house revealed themselves at the window, then he would shoot him with the rifle. When he was dead, he would rush through the garden, scale the fence and start his assault on the building. One man he felt certain he could defeat. That was why it was vital he shot the other one before he went inside.

He glanced down at his watch. It was eleven-fifteen at night, and he had been in position for three hours. His shoulder was starting to ache where the butt of the rifle was jabbing into the muscle, and the skin around his right eye was sore from being pressed against the sight. The waiting, he reflected to himself. That is when our strength is tested.

He glanced up to the sky. A moon was shining down and the stars were burning brightly. Somewhere in the distance he could hear a police car rushing towards Hammersmith Broadway, and down on King Street he could hear some boys getting into a closing-time punch-up. Soon I will be back in the Empty Quarter, in my homeland, he thought to himself. As soon as the railway bomb was delivered, he would leave the country and hide in the Saudi wilderness for a year or more. He longed for the cleanliness and purity of the desert.

A movement – a glimpse of a man's head moving across the first-floor window. Sallum pressed his eye closer to the sight, keeping his finger poised on the rifle's trigger. A man, definitely – he had vanished from view, but he had looked as if he was heading to the bathroom. That meant he would be back in a minute or two. Sallum composed himself. The moment of attack was approaching.

His mind drifted to thoughts of his friend Atta, who had led the attacks on the Great Satan with such spectacular success on 11 September 2001. A fine, upstanding man, Sallum still regarded him as the noblest individual he had ever met, and envied his martyr's death. He looked forward to being reunited with him and the other fallen comrades in the kingdom of Allah. Just before the attacks, Atta had given each one of the martyrs a notebook to inspire them, and he had given one to Sallum as well. He had memorised it by heart, and one passage leapt into his mind now as he waited for the target to re-emerge.

'Completely forget something called "this life". The time for play is over and the serious time is upon us,' Atta had written. He'd told them to consult the sura of the Koran called al Anfa, or the Spoils of War. Under his breath, Sallum recited the fines Atta had instructed them to commit to memory:
'Remember how they said: "O Allah! If this is indeed the truth from Thee, rain down on us a shower of stones from the sky, or send us a grievous Penalty."'

Another movement. Even at a distance of fifty metres Sallum could make out a flash of hair, and beneath it the skin of a man's forehead. He steadied his arm, lining up the sights with the man's head, checked that it was perfectly aimed, then softly squeezed the trigger. The bullet exploded from the barrel of the gun, smashing through the window of the house opposite. Glass shattered and Sallum could see the bullet colliding with the head of the man. Through the telescopic sights, he could see fragments of skull splintered against the wall, and body dropping to the ground.

Sallum paused, waiting to see if the target stood up. Nothing. The victory was his, he decided, a smile of professional satisfaction on his face. He unhooked the PSG-1 from its stand, holding it in his right hand, and ran down to the kitchen and out into the garden. He scaled the back fence in one swift movement, landing just next to the rusty swing. The moment for the assault was here.

Four of the thieves are dead, and the fifth man is about to die. The anger of the Prophet will be satiated.