The Hit List (32 page)

'Thanks, man,' whispered Leon.

As Slater held the mouth open, Leon knelt behind the head, and with some difficulty extracted half a dozen teeth from the corpse's lower jaw with the pliers. Repositioning himself on the chest, quivering with the effort, he extracted half a dozen more from i the upper.

Collecting the teeth, Slater hurled them as far as he I could into the river -- their entry into the water was j barely audible. Taking the knife Slater then stabbed] downwards into the guts and sawed a long transverse i cut. There was a low belch of escaping gas, and �|

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ch of such foulness that both men involuntarily

their heads away. Kmld save your crayfish a few days' work,' Slater led.

tanks, brother,' said Leon, taking a three-metre and padlock from the bag. 'They'll be grateful.' ^rapping the disembowelled and half-naked corpse le cut-off clothes in chicken-wire, the two men threaded the chain through the mesh until the was completely contained by the chicken wire. ; the chain tight, Leon padlocked it to itself. a the zip-bag, Slater then took a 10 kg grapnel r. Unwrapping it from its towel, he shackled it to lain binding the chicken-wire, and laid it on the t's chest.

thumbed the transmit button on his comms re we all clear, Eve? Over.' iclear. Over.' sas? Over.' : clear here. Over.'

Over and out.' it.' He turned to Slater. 'Let's go.'

the mummy-shaped remains, the two men at a crouch across the towpath and along the the end they lowered the body to the ;. Below them, Slater sensed the dark, rushing f the river.

,' he whispered. 'On the count of three.' ing the weighted bundle by the chains, they the remains of Antoine Fanon-Khayat to the

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black surface of the water. There was no splash.

Leon thumbed his transmitter switch. 'Job done people. Over and out.'

For a moment, exhausted, they sat there at the end of the jetty.

'I'm impressed,' said Slater. 'You thought of everything.'

'Thanks,' said Leon, throwing the knife, the pliers, and the plumb-line far out into the river. 'Now let's all get the fuck out of here.'

On the towpath, they reconnected with Andreas. The three of them were light-headed with relief now -- whatever happened at least they didn't have a corpse in the back of the car.

Ducking under the trees, Andreas picked up one end of the trunk. Slater took the other. As it now contained only a duvet, two sleeping bags and the zip up holdall the effort involved was not great. Andreas lit a cigarette, and the party moved jauntily back along the path. As they approached the parking place Eve stepped from the reeds, her night-vision goggles still in place.

'Talk about a herd of bloody elephants,' she said i reprovingly. 'Honestly, guys!'

'We're tourists, lady,' said Andreas. 'What do we know?'

As they approached the Peugeot and the Mercedes, Eve and Leon pulled out their keys and activated the remote unlocking devices. Opening the Peugeot boot. Slater and Andreas slung the trunk inside. Andreas \

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i*

te what I mean about this job?' he grinned. 'Piece

s, isn't it?' l not sure I'd call it that,' said Slater. 'I hate these

ag disposals.'

at you're glad you joined, aren't you? I mean, I right to tell them that you were the guy for the

;r nodded. The other man was a dim outline him. 'Yeah. You were right. And I haven't ' thanked you for that. When we get back to the jfproper beer I'll buy you a pint or ten.'

eas punched Slater's shoulder. 'It's a deal! And : you're wondering, Cadre operations aren't as fucking seat-of-the-pants as this one has ij Usually we just whip it in, whip it out and wipe

shrugged. 'We've done what we came to do. |iseems good enough to me.'

I they had. Fanon-Khayat had vanished from the

Fthe earth, and the disc was back at the OP under chful eye of Chris. To be precise, it was in the i Veneta bag that Eve had bought for Debbie. It I't have been beyond the capabilities of six

ceful agents to get an Italian handbag from Paris ion.

cr exhaled. Fuck, but he was glad they'd got rid

: body.

er was just turning to find Eve, and perhaps to

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i

squeeze her hand in the dark, when a torch shone' directly and blindingly into his eyes. Several othetj \ flicked on around them until it became apparent that' they were surrounded. Slater's first irritated assumption was that this was some kind of local posse suspicious of! their night-time activities, but a second glance drained from him every last vestige of optimism. The torches he saw, were attached to suppressed MP5 Heckler and Koch machine guns. One of the lights behind him i illuminated the figure in whose unwavering sights he now stood. A figure he recognised immediately as Branca Nikolic.

'Alors,' she said. 'Monsieur Neil. . . Clissold.'

This vwas a different Branca. Like her four; companions she was was wearing a leaf-patterned I windproof smock, combat trousers and hiking boots. No trace now of the fashion-victim or the party-girl.; At a pinch, but for the MP5s and the unwavering stares, she and her team might have been returning, from a weekend's birdwatching.

'Madame Fanon-Khayat!' said Slater, his heart! lurching in his chest. 'How are you?'

In reply she raised her weapon to her shoulder. 'You; have something belonging to my husband,' she said.^ Her voice was like gravel, and strongly French-1 accented. 'A compact disc. Where is it?'

Slater said nothing. He felt sick. Beside him, Eve, Andreas and Leon stood in expressionless silence.

'We know why you come here, Clissold, and we know you have just . . . sunk Antoine's body in this

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frOf thztje m'enfous -- I'm not interested. He was ^id and greedy man and you have saved us the t of getting rid of him ourselves. Je vous remercie.' spoke several words in a language Slater to be Serbian, and the others smiled. No are your friends?' Slater asked her. ey are loyal soldiers of my country, and they are

take what is theirs. The disc, Mr Clissold.' an't know what you are talking about.' talking about the disc you were in the process ; from my husband when I came into the flat, sold. The disc you finally stole from him after ered him in the Hotel Inter-Lux at Roissy. |/you have a choice. You give me the disc right and we have brought the hardware to verify it >u give us the woman and exchange her later for c.'

id they take them out? Slater wondered Jy. If the four of them went in fast and hard Jfwthout concern for their own safety? Would a sufficient element of surprise? He dismissed out of hand -- this was obviously a highly 1, highly professional team. They had played it Illy, with a silent and invisible approach and '. tactical positioning. As things stood, each of the had a clear field of fire on each of the Cadre ers. Any attempt to rush them would lead |y to fatalities.

aid you, we don't have any disc,' said Slater. His |was calm but inwardly he was screaming.

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We're blown. They know fucking everything. They've followed us everywhere.

In response, Branca Nikolic flicked off the safety catch of her MP5, marched over to Eve, and jammed the muzzle of the weapon's silencer under the point of Eve's jaw. A second team-member joined her, pressing his weapon into Eve's back.

'OK,' said Branca. 'This is the deal. You have thirty six hours to produce the disc, and as I said, we have the hardware for instant verification. If you do not hand over the disc to me in the bar of the Hotel Grand Exelmans at midday on Tuesday - time enough to get it back from London if necessary - this woman will be killed. ^Evidence also will be made available to the police implicating you, this gendeman here' - she nodded at Andreas - 'and the British Secret Intelligence Service in the murder of my husband. Compris?

Slater shrugged. He caught Eve's eye. She looked angry but unafraid, and held his gaze even when Branca jabbed her painfully in the throat with her weapon.

'We'll be there,' he said, hoping that Eve understood that his words were intended for her. 'Don't you worry, we'll be there.'

'Good,' said Branca, and then spoke in Serbian again.

A member of the team accompanying her walked i over to the Peugeot and the Mercedes. One by one, he let down all the tyres until both cars were flat on their

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as.

fe don't want to slow you down more than we ;to,' Branca explained, 'but we do have to take roman away with us. Professional to professional, are you'll understand. And understand one other Mr Clissold, if that is your name. Understand i after all that has happened my country has no ^for lasting enmity with yours. We have been allies

e, we can be allies again.'

flrprised, Slater met her hard blue eyes and inclined ad wordlessly. This was a very different Branca to he had met in her husband's apartment. What jell kind of game was she playing? She clearly >ied a position of some authority if she was in of a team as switched on as this one appeared to

had to be Serbian RDB agents, thought Slater Sndendy. It must have been these jokers who had ^tailing the Cadre cars up the motorway. The fact jhis instincts had been proved right on that

ar point gave him no pleasure at all. ica raised her hand in a quasi military salute, we meet again, gentlemen. Au revoir.' with that, accompanied by Eve, all of the team pt one withdrew into the darkness. The remaining I'kept Slater, Leon and Andreas covered with his $. After fifteen minutes, as the trio stood there in ss, dazzled silence, they heard the faint, far at sound of a vehicle starting up. It came slowly r, and then halted out of sight. The guard backed

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away keeping his torch and weapon trained on the t�ee men and at the last moment turned and ran into pounds kness, where none of the three was mchned_to follow him. They heard a door open and close - the vehLle was showing no lights, either mtemaUy or Ixtlally - a crunching acceleration, and then sdence.

,� 1 > _.:J CUcor

'Fuck,' said Slater.

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THIRTEEN

of them enjoyed the night that followed. Leon up Chris on his mobile, and outlining the in a few terse sentences, gave her their map inates and asked her to arrange for a breakdown to come out and inflate their tyres, had been waiting for twenty minutes when a Holding a torch arrived on foot. At his side, held lort leash, was an agitated-sounding Dobermann ler guard-dog.

had let down their tyres, Leon explained. : waiting for assistance, word 'vandals' had the effect that he hoped: act attention from what they had been doing (4n the first place. The man offered to ring the -- there had been other incidents, he said, lally he suspected that drug users frequented sa. He had bought a property up the road a of years ago under the impression that he had a tranquil corner for his family to enjoy at ends, but it had not been long before they discovering the condoms and the used ges on the towpath. 'What do you say to your

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children,' he asked them, 'when they say, Papa, what's this?'

Leon admitted that he had no idea. The culprits, he said, were probably zonards -- occupants of the public housing estates which ringed Paris. There were, he added mischievously, a lot of immigrants among them. . .

The householder agreed. Wherever immigrants established themselves, problems followed. He had nothing against them personally, but there were just too many of them. It was a cultural question - a question of standards.

Eventually, in a warm glow of nationalist outrage, and having failed to register that Leon himself was one of the 'problematic' immigrants in question, the man led his dog back to Joigny.

The breakdown service arrived twenty minutes later from Mantes-la-Jolie, and Leon settled their considerable bill with cash.

'They were RJDB, for sure,' Leon told -Chris an hour and a half later. 'My guess is that they were in Paris to find out who he was doing the Ondine business with, so that they could knock out the middle-man and take control. And he'd obviously boasted - perhaps to Branca - that he had a disc containg material so damaging to Britain that it could be used to negotiate the return of Karadzic.'

'So what do you reckon Branca's part is in all this?' asked Chris.

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Chris Ryan

JtLeon shrugged. 'My guess is that the bimbo act was ;icdy for her husband's benefit. That was the real ica we saw last night. She's an RDB agent like her aer, and the whole marriage thing was a set-up to tie lon-Khayat to Serbia.'

later agreed. 'She certainly looked as switched-on ic rest of them this evening -1 can't imagine Eve's ; easy to creep up on. And she looked pretty familiar

that MP5.'

I'Yes,' agreed Chris. 'I think we have to agree that saw the real Branca Nikolic this evening. What |'s doing with this Miko Pasquale guy - the dope fcr -- I'm less sure of. That's where Terry is right watching Pasquale's flat.' ly joy?' asked Slater.

Jo. There's no one there at the present minute. fs the only connection we've got to Branca, iigh. For obvious reasons she hasn't gone back to I'apartment over the road. My guess is that the RDB followed Fanon-Khayat to the hotel, bribed staff-member to point him out, discovered that place had been taken by Andreas and that Andreas hanging out with a Monsieur Clissold and a oiselle Benbow and . . .' She shrugged. 'They've on to us ever since. From what you say they Jy know that we're based here at the Grand ans.'

>n nodded in agreement. 'I'm sure you're right. I think we should look pretty closely at our own ater-surveillance efforts. We've been pretty badly

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shown up here. The only one of us who spotted anything was Neil.'

There was silence. Leon had said what everyone else had been thinking - that they all shared the responsibility for Eve's capture.

'So what do you propose?' asked Slater. 'They've probably got us staked out right now.'

'There's a good chance they don't know about Terry -- he's only been in and out once since they've been on to us - and I'm almost certain that they don't know about me, because I haven't left the room. For the moment all they know is that you, Andreas and Eve use the place. It won't take them long to figure out that there are more of us here, though, because if they know the names that you checked into the Inter-Lux with - Clissold, Benbow, et cetera - and have found out that there's no one of that name registered here .. .'