The Hit List (7 page)

He'd driven straight to London, and used the remainder of the day scouting the Highbury area. At nine o'clock the next morning, after a night at a cheap hotel, he'd visited the first estate agent. By midday he was pocketing the keys to 28 Mafeking Terrace, and forty-eight hours later, after hiring a van and scouring the Holloway Road's second-hand furniture and kitchen shops, he had the place in working order. The fridge had a weird shuddering hum that no amount of tinkering seemed to fix, and he preferred not to think too closely about the provenance of the cooker - but it was a base.

The other reason - apart from affordability -- that he'd chosen the area was that it was on the Piccadilly underground line. Although he'd been unwilling to involve himself with bodyguard and private security work when he'd first left the Regiment - the work hadn't promised the clean break he'd been looking for - Slater had reviewed his options over the course of those long runs through the Herefordshire hill country. The pay-off from Bolingbroke's wouldn't last

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and his choices were few. Working as a iyguard had its down-sides -- you had to wear a suit, a start - but by all accounts the money was good. Piccadilly Line ran through Mayfair, itsbridge and Belgravia, which is where most of work was. Bodyguarding hours were long, and er didn't want to spend a second more than cessary getting to and from work. ,His time at Bolingbroke's was now a distant emory. Ever-present, however - despite Lark's Involvement - was the nagging worry that the affair at HE school would have serious consequences for him. ; The Saudis, he was certain, would not wish news to ; out about the attempt on Masoud al-Jubrin, and it probably to accommodate the Saudis that the alice had been stood down and the terrorists' and the gad security men's bodies had been spirited away by i MI6 cleaning team. No sense jeopardising an entire s-sales programme because of a local unpleasant; - especially one that that would reflect so poorly i all parties.

|< Pembridge, in his turn, would do all that he could to i up the affair for the sake of the school. But that still a lot of mouths to be stopped: Mrs Mackay, Jean amey, the Popleys, the Boyd-Farquharsons, the fami i of the security men . . . If any one of them went to : press then there would be some very hefty deals to brokered. And the security services, as Lark had pressed on Slater on more than one occasion, really ed to do deals of that sort.

i

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No, Slater would be made to take the drop if there was a court of inquiry. There would be a lot of talk about post-traumatic stress and the difficult circumstances of his departure from the Regiment, but in the end they'd leave him swinging in the wind. He just had to hope that it never came to that. It was a worry, though, and a serious one.

How should I dress for the interview? he wondered.

Minerva Close Protection was a small but very successful company set up by a former Guards officer. Based in Knightsbridge, the company employed a number of ex-SAS soldiers, among others, to guard and otherwise minister to its stable of super-wealthy clients. The work often involved counter-surveillance and evasive driving in addition to straight body guarding - if Minerva clients appeared in the newspapers, they prefered it to be at a time and in a context of their own choosing.

Slater had been recommended to Minerva by Tommo Goss, an ex-Coldstream Guardsman who had spent two years with G Squadron. There was a large number of private security companies based in the West End, Goss had explained to Slater over a pint, but there was a limited amount of really top-drawer work. And a lot of companies ripped you off, charging up to a thousand pounds a day for your services and only passing on a quarter of that figure to you. Minerva played fair, Goss said, and if you played fair in return you could expect to make a lot of money.

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at do you mean, "play fair in return"?' Slater asked.

)on't cut out the agency by offering to deal direct,' answered, 'and don't dip the quill in company

)ip the--'

I'Don't bang the female clients. Those are the two ic rules. And the boss, Duckworth, is a canny er - he'll find out if you're playing around. He j't say anything, but you won't hear from him

either.'

f'Slater decided to attend the interview in the clothes I stood up in. No point in trying to go smart - he'd dy get it wrong.

I?Within thirty minutes of leaving Mafeking Terrace was entering an anonymous block overlooking lyde Park. The offices, which were on the eighth jor, were quietly expensive. A receptionist showed jter to a waiting area containing a large abstract iting and current editions of Vogue and the New ker. Nothing suggested that this was a company Fed principally by ex-special forces soldiers and pret service personnel.

Five minutes later the receptionist was back. She was pretty - the almond-shaped eyes and wide smile ring the lie to the severely tailored grey suit. She So, Slater guessed, represented a test for potential iployees like himself. If you couldn't resist trying it with her, you were probably not suitable iyguard material. Tearing his eyes from her trim

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figure, he tried to give an impression of watchfulness as he followed her across the silent carpet past a series of closed doors.

Peter Duckworth was a tall, languid figure in - Slater guessed -- his early fifties. His hair was silver and his suit of exquisite cut. His eyes twinkled.

'Mr Slater -- Neil - come in. Coffee?'

Slater was not deceived by the affable manner. There was something lethal about Duckworth.

For ten minutes the former Guards officer quizzed Slater about his SAS activities. Slater's responses were neutral and in several instances he felt it prudent not to answer - the man was a civilian, after all.

'And I understand that you're a close friend of Tom Goss, is that right?'

'We were in Belize together, instructing on the jungle warfare course,' said Slater.

Duckworth nodded and helped himself to a biscuit from the tray at his side. 'Good. Lovely. Well, let me tell you a bit about what we do here . . .'

Duckworth spoke for twenty minutes. Slater guessed he had given the same talk, word for word, many times before. The company's clients, he explained, were people of wealth - he used the phrase as if it were a form of victimhood. Their lifestyles were not ordinary lifestyles, their needs were not ordinary needs, their behaviour was not ordinary behaviour. 'Nevertheless,' said Duckworth, 'you will behave at all times as if it was. You will not be petulant, and you will not stand upon your dignity. You will refuse a client's request

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if, in your judgement, to accept it would com Mnise that client's security. Do you understand?' 'Yes,' said Slater, deliberately withholding the 'sir' at years of non-commissioned service otherwise >ught automatically to his lips. 'Good,' said Duckworth with a quick smile. 'Very

1. I'm sure you'll ... fit in.' h,Tm sure I will,' Slater said.

P'Duckworth nodded. 'Just before I ask Josephine to : through the paperwork with you, Neil, I'd like to [ you a few lines of poetry. You may make of them it you will.'

Slater, who was studying a framed painting of an ab boy with a snake draped around his neck, tried to ak intelligent. Duckworth removed a book from a drawer in his sk.

'When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his

He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside, But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and �7 . . .'

|" Hesitating, Duckworth glanced at Slater. 'For the female of the species', Slater obliged him, 'is

deadly than the male.' 'You know it!' said Duckworth. | 'My father used to read me Kipling when I was a Id,' said Slater. 'He was a Royal Engineers RSM. iandalay and Gunga Din were the nearest I ever got to arsery rhymes.'

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And your mother?' Duckworth asked delicately. She was knocked down and killed by a police car m *lg Kong when I was six.' brought up by the army, then.' nretty much.'

fhere are worse parents, as any bodyguard will tell You;

Abandoning any pretence of interest in Slater's

Winnings, Duckworth shifted his attention to the

Screen of his computer. 'Are you free to work on

^dnesday? I've got a rather interesting one for

*�u.'

s he stepped out of the marble atrium into the street, o i r r *

l�*ter heard his name called. A smiling dark-haired 1Sure, tough-looking beneath the fashionably cut suit, ^^s waving and hurrying towards him. 'Andreas!'

'Neil! How are you, man?'

'I'm OK. Wow! It's good to see you. Are you here tci . . .' he nodded up at the building he had just left.

'That's right. I've just been on a job in Europe for tl\em. You?'

Slater nodded, and looked the other man up and i a

a^>wn. Andreas van Rijn was recognisably the same Person that he had served with in the SAS. The same s*^uare features and amused brown eyes, the same s\vagger, the same air of being up for anything. But s^>mething had changed. Some subtle smoothmg-out Process had taken place.

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ktil his departure five years earlier, Andreas van been one of the Regiment's more colourful Cters. Good-humoured in the vilest of conditions I, supremely efficient soldier, he had always seemed ^ter to represent the best that the SAS stood for. /o men had been good friends, serving together >rthern Ireland, the Gulf, Libya and Sri Lanka. : had shared more hangovers than either of them [ to remember and probably, it occurred to Slater, girlfriend too. eas had left the Regiment after an Overthrust

|?erthrust was an inter-service cooperation ic between the special forces and MIS. Slater, van Rijn, Dave Constantine and a handful of ^NCOs had been sent to London, dressed in plain and placed alongside the Box agents (in circles MIS was known as 'Box' after their old 3x 500 address, just as MI6 were invariably 'the ). On balance, Slater reckoned, the soldiers had i up the spooks. Northern Ireland had sharpened and they were more aware of the consequences ?t doing the job properly. Dave Constantine claimed that he'd been on a surveillance detail forth London with a Box agent when his anion had glanced at his watch, said, 'Right, five ft that's me off home,' climbed out of the car, and ared. While Slater only half-believed the story, ad not particularly enjoyed the Millbank phere. For his money there were too many

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smart-arsed, number-crunching twenty-three-year olds about the place.

Andreas, on the other hand, had appeared impressed by the set-up, and the general assumption in Hereford had been that he had been cross-recruited.

'Listen,' he told Slater now, still smiling, 'are you free for lunch? Because if so give me half an hour

They arranged to meet in Harvey Nichols, at the fifth-floor restaurant. En route, Slater visited a shoe shop. He had a good suit, bought at Austin Reed out of his SAS clothing allowance, but if he was going to be pounding pavements he needed new shoes. He settled for Church's black Oxfords. The price made him wince but if there was one thing that Slater had learnt in his years of soldiering, it was that you had to look after your feet. In Harvey Nichols he added a couple of plain white shirts and a black, knitted silk tie to his shopping basket. You couldn't go wrong with black and white, he reasoned. It was discreet, as bodyguarding demanded, but it also had that sixties retro look he'd seen advertised in the magazines in the Minerva offices. Next time he came face to face with the delectable receptionist, he decided, he'd look the part.

At the table, Andreas immediately ordered them a glass of Champagne each. Slater eyed his narrow stemmed tulip-glass dubiously. The swanky restaurant and the Champagne obviously represented some sort of attempt to impress: in the old days they'd have made straight for a pub.

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Neil!' Andreas began. 'How have you been?' fell, I'm out of the Regiment,' Slater began. 'I left : before Kosovo. Since then I've been working at a

jl, coaching the rugby team.' ^And how was that?' asked Andreas. 'A bit low-gear : a man of your talents, I'd have said.' fWell, it didn't really work out in the end,' said r. How much did Andreas know? he wondered. If was working for Minerva, presumably he wasn't working for Box. If, indeed, he ever had worked g'Box.

For a time they talked of mutual friends and old s. Slater reminded Andreas of an incident that had seen them both RTUed, when an intelligence known as the Forces Research Unit had jvered that a Provo sniper unit was assembling at scation near the border and had tried to scramble SAS. To their fury and frustration the FRU were that the Lisburn duty officer could get no jonse from the unit. Little wonder -- the entire i, including Slater and Andreas, had been at a Def >pard concert in the Belfast city centre. If any of Cm had heard their pagers over the ear-numbing of sound it would have been little short of a racle.

'This is good,' said Slater, indicating the shining iche of swordfish on his plate.

'It's metropolitan food,' smiled Andreas. 'You've en on ration-packs and school cabbage for too long. low did you find Minerva?'

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'The money seems pretty good. And the work sounds pretty painless. How do you find it?'

'Well the fact is, Neil, I don't actually work for Minerva. I was looking for you.'

The? How did you know I was going to be there?' The moment he had spoken Slater realised how naive his words sounded.

'Everything connects, Neil. You know that. How about another glass of Champagne?'

'I'd have preferred a beer, but yeah, OK.'

Andreas smiled, beckoned him closer and brought him up to date. After the Overthrust exercise he had -- as Slater had guessed -- crossed over. He'd been ready for a change of scene. Had had enough, frankly, of freezing his bollocks off in all weathers.

And he'd enjoyed what he'd found, he told Slater. Plenty of brain-work, plenty of weirdness, and a lot of autonomy. 'I plan my own operations,' he explained. 'Get the word from upstairs and set things up in my own way.'