Stone Cold (2 page)

I let Jeremy know I was coming, then called him when I arrived and we agreed to meet for lunch. We had kept in touch and I knew that he had started a private security firm, Fitzwilliam Harvey Security, or FHS. He had good family connections to start him off. He carried out discreet investigations and supplied bodyguards and security advice for the rich. It was all top-drawer stuff. No uniformed guards patrolling factory perimeters for him.

We met in a wine bar in Knightsbridge, near his office. Jeremy blended in with the scenery, with his dark suit and tasteful tie, and the beginning of a roll of pink flesh above his collar. Jeremy had the knack of blending in. When I first met him I thought he was a typical British officer, private school (OK, public school in British terminology), university and Sandhurst, trim, with a brisk, quietly commanding manner. When I got to know him I realized that he was far from being what the British Army calls a “military shit”, devoting his life to advancement up the chain of command, and he had a cynical view of much of went on in the army.

Over lunch we shared a half-bottle of Mersault with smoked trout and salad. I remember it was Mersault because Jeremy said he did not drink a lot at lunchtime and this was one of the few places that sold decent wines by the half-bottle.

We reminisced about Germany for a while, and he told me about the wife and son he had acquired since we last met, and I told him what had happened to me since I left the army and about my father and coming to England. Then I got to the point. “Have you got any ideas for a job for me? You know, I’ve been an army officer and I can speak several languages: French, German, American, some British. And I’m brilliant, as you well know, and resourceful.”

“David, we’re still coming out of the recession, whatever the politicians say,” he said. “Didn’t anyone tell you?”

“OK, it’s not the best time to look for a job. It’s never a good time to look for a job.”

“FHS is doing well and we’ll be expanding soon. I may be able to bring you in, with your intelligence background,” he said. “I was just thinking this morning that we need people with a bit more
savoir
faire
.”

I was glad he had not offered me a job right away. I did not want to go into security and I did not want to have to turn him down. “You surprise me,” I said. “I would have thought FHS was overflowing with
savoir
faire
.”

“Not really. I had a wealthy American couple who said they wanted a bodyguard to accompany them around Europe. She wears all her jewellery when she goes out in the evening and apparently she’s bought up half of Bond Street. I gave them Tommy Thompson, ex-Scotland Yard Special Branch. They called to say they weren’t happy with him. He didn’t know how to behave when they went out to dinner to the kind of places they go to.”

“Do you see me as a bodyguard? Frankly, it’s not the career I envisaged.”

“Not primarily, no. We do private investigations, mainly through personal recommendation. I’ve got a job on at the moment, a crime in the family and they want to keep it in the family. Aristos. You could be useful for that kind of thing. That would be where your resourcefulness, et cetera, would come in.”

“Actually, I’m looking for something more in the management line,” I told him. “Or selling internationally,”

“Mmm.” He studied his smoked trout. “I’ll think about it. Maybe talk to one of my clients. In the meantime, I’ll tell you what. I’ve got a list of a few people I call on every now and again to do a job, on a freelance basis. Would you like me to put you on that list? It might help tide you over and at least you’ll be earning. And who knows, you might decide you like it.”

“Try me if something comes up, how about that? By the way, who’s Harvey?”

“Hmm?”

“Fitzwilliam Harvey Security. Who’s Harvey?”

“My dog. A Labrador. Lovely fellow, had him since he was a puppy. If I don’t want to take something on, if it sounds a bit dodgy, I say, ‘I’d like to but Harvey won’t hear of it, and he’s very stubborn.’ Now tell me, what do you think are the prospects in the American election?”

*

Over the next three weeks I acquired a small stack of letters saying nothing doing, and a list of companies that did not bother to reply. Living alone, I was beginning to miss the network of support that the army provided. Anne from one floor below invited me in for coffee whenever I passed her in the doorway. Maybe it was my imagination but her cleavage seemed to be more pronounced each time. I was living on capital and it was running down slowly; I was not going to go broke soon but I was beginning to get a little anxious.

Then Jeremy phoned and said he had a short-term job for me if I wanted it. “Bodyguarding, I’m afraid. For two weeks. A Francophone African, from the Congo, doesn’t speak much English, that’s why I thought of you.”

“From the Congo?”

“That’s right. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, as it calls itself these days.”

“OK, I’ll take it. Thanks.” At least I would be earning money for two weeks and not sitting at home watching my supply of funds dwindle.

The body I was to guard was plump but firm, like a filled balloon. It belonged to Mr Ayolo, who, so far as Jeremy could make out, had got his hands on a lot of copper and cobalt mines in the days when Congo was Zaire and was run by Mobutu, who was the champion kleptocrat in Africa, supported by the CIA. Ayolo seemed to have kept his wealth. He lived mostly in Brussels. As so often, the old colonial connection still held; the Congo used to be the Belgian Congo.

I had never been a bodyguard but I had supervised other people and I knew what needed to be done. My client told me that some people in the Congo wanted to kill him, and others might kidnap him for ransom, which had happened to a friend of his.

For a week I slept in the next room to Ayolo in his hotel. I sifted his callers, those on the telephone or in person. There were not many. I advised him on who to tip at the hotel and what to eat. When I accompanied him I watched crowds, individuals in crowds, anyone who came near him.

Ayolo was disappointed that I did not carry a pistol. I explained to him that this is not allowed in Britain. I can’t say I enjoyed his company. His conversation was mostly about the luxury items in his home in Brussels and how many suits he had. “Twelve,” he told me. “Blue and grey and brown. Made by de Villiers, the finest tailor in Brussels. Do you know de Villiers, Mr. Root?” I admitted that I did not. “I order two suits at a time there. Never one, always two.”

One time he pointed to the taps in his bathroom. “I have taps like that in my home,” he said. “Mine are silver. Not solid silver, silver-plated.”

“Not solid silver? Times must be hard,” I said sympathetically.

He had a call girl come to his room, a chirpy cockney Barbie doll with a spectacular rack, and I had to check her out also. He said to me, “Wouldn’t you like a girlfriend like that?”

“I’m saving up to buy one,” I said.

He nodded approvingly. He had no sense of irony. Throwing out remarks like that and watching them disappear into that self-satisfied countenance was getting tiresome. It was like trying to play tennis with someone who never hits the ball back.

One day he said he felt like seeing the English countryside. He had heard of a hotel in Norfolk that was supposed to be splendid, with an excellent French restaurant, and he wanted to spend a couple of days there. I booked rooms for us and organized a Daimler with a chauffeur to take us down. We set out in the morning. The weather was pleasantly warm but the sun was hidden behind clouds.

Eighty percent of kidnappings take place while the victim is motion, so I sat in the front with my two pieces of equipment: a tiny mirror on a suction cap stuck onto the windscreen, so that I could see what was happening behind as well as the chauffeur could with his rear-view mirror, and a length of lead piping in the glove compartment.

I liked the change of scenery from concrete to greenery, but it was a monotonous landscape as we drove through Suffolk, mostly hedges along the roadside and behind them, flat fields under cultivation. The horizons were close, and the off-white sky seemed to be low – a ceiling rather than a sky.

The ride was smooth and if I had not had a job to do I could have leaned my head back and gone to sleep. Heading eastwards, we crossed from Suffolk into Norfolk and, as if to mark the change, two pheasants took off from the roadside just in front of the car. Keeping my eye on the cars behind us, I noticed that there was one that always seemed to be there, a grey BMW. Was it following us? We left the dual carriageway for an A road where there were very few cars, but it was still there. It was probably not significant but as a bodyguard it’s your job to be paranoid.

I decided to take it seriously. I said to the chauffeur, “George, there’s a double roundabout up ahead. I want you to go on to the second one, go around it, and then back to the first, as if you’d taken the wrong turning, and then turn left. Have you got that?”

George was a small man with a thin face and the bearing of a man who was proud that he could carry out orders properly, the kind of person you often get in the army. “Yes sir,” he said, and did just that. The BMW followed us around the roundabout and stayed with us. Now it was significant. There was not much traffic on the road now. We pulled off onto a narrow country road with ploughed fields on both sides. It was a winding road and the BMW was not in sight, but I was pretty sure it was still on our tail.

I had no strong protective feeling about the fat, corrupt Mr Ayolo, but I do have a sense that if you accept payment for a job then you should do it. I said to George, “I think we’re being followed. I’ll tell you what I want you to do. I want you to pull up at the side of the road and then get out and look at the road map, as if you’re studying it. Then when no one is looking give me your chauffer’s cap and we’ll change places. I’ll take over the driving. OK?”

We were changing places when the BMW sped by. Then we were off again with me driving, wearing George’s cap.

A mile down the road the BMW was waiting at a side road leading to a farm entrance, and it pulled out to follow us as we passed. “Well, they’re not bothering to hide their intentions,” I thought. “They’re going to make their move soon,” and my heart started to bump against my chest.

It turned out to be very soon. A blue station wagon pulled out in front of us and stopped, blocking the road. I had to brake hard. I heard Ayolo swear as he was thrown forward, straining against his seat belt.

Then things happened very quickly. The BMW pulled up on our right and the man next to the driver jumped out and ran over to us. He was a burly, broad-shouldered figure in a sweater and jeans with a balaclava covering his face. Another man, also wearing a balaclava, got out of the station wagon and ran towards us on the other side.

Behind me a man swung something metal and smashed the window next to Ayolo. The man on my side pulled out a pistol, poked it at the window and motioned for me to get out. I sat there as if stunned, as if I was not taking in what was happening, as a chauffeur might well do. I was thinking hard.

I turned around to take a quick glance at what was happening in the back. The man was hitting the window again so that he could enlarge the hole the first blow had made. Ayolo was pulling away, terrified.

I noticed that the man on my side with the gun was watching George, who was not moving, probably rigid with fear. Evidently, he had sized him up as the bodyguard, which was what I intended. He had taken me as the chauffeur, and no threat. With a slight movement I hoped he would not notice, I flipped open the lock on the door. Then I tensed my muscles.

He motioned again with the pistol, thrusting his face up close to the window. I pressed down the door handle and abruptly pushed open the door, slamming it into his face as hard as I could. He yelled and staggered backwards with blood pouring through his balaclava. I had probably broken his nose.

He pulled up his balaclava to reveal a swarthy face with a large black moustache and blood spurting from his nose. He was in pain and angry. He raised his pistol, holding it in two hands now, and pointed it at me. With two hands on a pistol, you are not gesturing, you are going to use it.

The car was still in gear so I stepped on the accelerator and we shot forward. I heard a howl of pain from behind, where the man who was reaching through the broken window to try to open the door had had his arm wrenched away. In the rear-view mirror I saw that angry man pointing his pistol at me and imagined the bullet going into the back of my head. The thought flashed through my mind that the last sight I would see would be a face covered with blood and bursting with anger.

I rammed the car into second and third gear and then fourth as I turned and accelerated over to the grassy verge beside the road, swung around the station wagon with a few bumps on the rough ground, and then we were back on the road and I was mentally thanking that brilliant German engineer Dr Gottfried Daimler for his fine engine with its excellent acceleration.

I don’t know whether the angry man with the gun fired and missed or thought better of it and held his fire. Most likely he held his fire. They were kidnappers, not killers. Ayolo dead in a car crash would no use to them.

Now I started shaking, keeping the wheel steady with some difficulty. In the movies someone has a narrow escape from death and carries on with a quip. It’s not often like that. I know some soldiers get pretty spooked out because a few have told me about it, usually late at night after some drinks. I was badly shaken and I slowed down while I regained enough composure to keep on the road.