Zero Hour (39 page)

Everyone in blue had a not-so-happy face on. ‘Mate, fucking one-all against Blackburn? Nightmare,’ somebody yelled into his mobile. ‘Who’da fucking believed it?’

I scanned the crowd and pinged him almost immediately. He came level and passed me, looking like something off the cover of a menswear catalogue in his blue wool coat and pressed blue cords. He looked straight ahead, trying, like everyone else, to avoid banging into people or getting knocked over himself. The crowd was shoulder to shoulder.

I let him pass and get five or six paces ahead before I edged my way into the flow with a big smile on my face, like I was making my way over to a mate. Nine out of ten times, if you’re friendly when you tell them you’re coming through, people will move aside.

As they did, I reached into my right pocket and gripped the pliers, making sure the jaws were nice and open. Jules’s hands were down at his side. He couldn’t have swung them even if he’d wanted to. I focused on his left hand. He probably had a watch under that coat sleeve but that didn’t bother me. It would just add to the pain.

My right hand was at the same level as his left and centimetres away. I pulled the pliers from my coat, jammed them against his sleeve and squeezed hard. I grabbed his arm with my left hand so I could steer him. He reacted like he’d been stung by a bee, but he still hadn’t worked out exactly what had happened. It could have been a burn from somebody’s cigarette. Then his eyes widened as he saw who it was and the pain really started to register. He tried to pull away but I squeezed the pliers into his wrist and manoeuvred him with my right shoulder.

‘Don’t fuck about or I’ll drop you here and now.’

We stayed in the flow as the crowd spilled onto Fulham Broadway and the majority turned right. Jules almost hugged me in his effort to keep the pressure off his pinched wrist. He looked like a walking heart-attack victim.

‘Not the tube. Left of the barriers.’

The street was still packed but we were no longer shoulder to shoulder. There were no words from him yet, but I wasn’t expecting any. If he was able to talk, his one and only concern had to be the pain.

I steered him left at the junction with Harwood Road. The crowd started to thin and most of the noise was behind us. I scanned for the Volvo down on the left. I knew it was going to be there, but I wanted to see if the driver still was.

As we approached, he opened the passenger door and pushed the seat forward for me. Still gripping Jules, I jumped into the back. I pushed the passenger seat upright again and dragged him inside with the pliers. Kleinmann’s trouser belt was beside me. The loose end was already threaded into the buckle to make a loop.

No one said a word as I threw the keys to Kleinmann. Jules fought the pain through clenched teeth. Kleinmann did up Jules’s seat belt like I’d told him to. I didn’t want the police making a routine traffic stop just because the passenger was unbelted. Jules’s face was screwed up with pain. I looped the belt over his head and around his neck and the head restraint, and pulled.

Jules’s left hand dangled between the door and the seat. I’d swapped the pliers into my left hand so I could keep control directly behind him. He pushed back against the head restraint and took several deep breaths, fighting the belt that was trying to stop him. It looked like he was going to start talking.

I pulled the belt tight to keep him in place. ‘Not now. You’ll have plenty of chance to waffle.’

I gave Kleinmann a nod. ‘Let’s go.’

The Cavendish Square car park was as good a place as any to head for. The car had a reason to be there because it had a designated space. It was also Sunday, so many of the business spaces around his were going to be empty.

It took us half an hour just to get away from the area of the ground, and another thirty minutes to get up behind John Lewis. He nosy-parked in his space.

Kleinmann unfastened his seat belt and opened his door. He was more than ready to get out. He left the keys in the ignition. He knew he had to return in thirty minutes. If he did, he did. I was beyond worrying about that at the moment.

As soon as the door closed I pulled tighter on the belt. Julian gagged and writhed his hips, as if that was going to help.

‘If you think that hurt, you’re not going to believe what’s coming next.’

I released the pliers and swapped them back into my right hand. Then, with my arse in the air, I reached over the back of his seat and clamped them onto the bridge of his nose. I squeezed until I could feel bone against the steel. He jerked his head and I squeezed harder. ‘Any more pressure and it’s going to burst. You know that.’

I wanted him scared. But I also wanted him to talk.

8

Jules’s breathing was fast and laboured. He tried to adjust his head to give his throat some respite. I felt the steel grind against bone. His hands gripped the sides of the seat to take the pain.

‘Kleinmann, Anna and me -‘ I gave the pliers a squeeze ‘- we’re trying to find a way out of this shit, and you’re going to help us.’

I pulled some more on the belt. He arched his back and his legs jerked straight, his feet pushing into the footwell. His mouth opened to spray saliva onto the windscreen. My left forearm rested on the top of his head with the pliers still gripping the bridge of his nose.

‘Why did you fuck me over, Jules?’

He didn’t react. He’d probably thought about it and knew the best thing was to stop moving and start thinking.

I released the belt a fraction so he could speak.

‘Nick, why didn’t you stand down and come back when I told you?’

‘What the fuck are you on about?’

I looked at him in the rear-view. His eyes were fixed on mine. Saliva ran down his chin. His eyes were wide, but fighting to keep control. He knew he was in the shit, and had to talk.

‘The police. The Dutch. They were watching the silo. A drugs operation.’

I loosened the belt a bit more.

‘We didn’t know about it, Nick. They saw you when you did your recce. They pinged the car, got the plate, and started to follow you out - but they lost you when you left the building. We only got on to it when Nicholas Smith was flagged. That’s when I told Bradley to stand you down. It was categorical, Nick. Come back, cut away. Why didn’t you?’

I jolted the belt to let him know I’d heard enough.

His eyes had already done most of the talking by the time he answered.

I released the pressure on his nose.

He took deep breaths and raised a hand to the wound.

I stuck the pliers against his neck, clamped down, and twisted. He screamed as I pulled tighter on the belt. The windows were completely steamed up.

‘Why send me on a job when you knew Bradley was going to drop me afterwards?’ I twisted again.

Now he was really worried. He knew how dead he might be soon.

I loosened the belt.

‘Please, Nick. You asked for the job. It got compromised on the first night and I told Tresillian to stand you down. Next thing I know, the silo’s hit, and Bradley and a girl are dead.’

‘What about Kleinmann? The drugs? The scan?’

His eyes flickered around, trying to process all this information.

‘You kept telling me you were fine. I know nothing about the drugs. I know nothing about any illness.’

He twisted his head left and upwards. As our eyes made contact I told him what had happened.

He didn’t move. The pliers had pinched into the skin and drops of blood coated the steel jaws.

‘It all started after our meal, Jules. What am I supposed to think?’

He fell silent. Neither of us spoke for a while.

‘You can do what you want with me, I know that. But I had nothing to do with what is happening to you or Kleinmann. Maybe I’m next. Have you thought about that? Maybe we need to sort this out together.’

Could he be telling the truth? Only one blue-and-white during the raid, and no back-up … Maybe I’d been followed, and they’d been sent just to break up the rape so they could keep me moving. They must have lost me. Then picked me up again when I planted the device …

The door opening on the factory next to the silo … maybe that was their OP. They didn’t know what the fuck I was doing with those girls. They wanted to follow the trail to get more int. They’d obviously react as soon as the shotgun rounds went off in the building. Maybe I’d been the target of the eye in the sky. I didn’t know. Maybe it didn’t really matter what they knew.

I wanted to believe Jules. And I knew he was right about one thing: there was a much bigger picture.

And it was hanging on Tresillian’s wall.

9

23.28 hrs

Jules drove us up the M5 to junction eleven, and then the A40 towards Cheltenham. Just before the town he turned off at the roundabout and got onto Hubble Road. We were in a company Prius from Thames House. Jules didn’t have a car of his own and we weren’t going back to get mine.

We’d been quiet all the way. It was only a little over a week since we’d last made this journey. A lot had happened since then. We were both taking stock.

Jules had called Tresillian and explained that I had Lilian and wanted to meet him.

I knew that Tresillian would take the meeting. What choice did he have?

Jules had some nice scabs forming on his neck. His nose was much the same and some bruising was just starting to show around his eyes. It would be weeks before he was box fresh again and back to catwalk perfection.

I thought back to the al-Kibar raid. I guess I’d always known that was the key. The rumours had run riot since the day of the attack. There were no hard facts out there at all. Nobody agreed about who knew what, or what people in the city had or hadn’t seen.

The following day, after I’d spent the most boring few hours of my life admiring ancient water wells, Damascus-based Syrian news, the voice of the government, reported that Israeli fighter jets had violated Syrian air space in the early hours of the morning, but Syria’s courageous defenders had triumphed. Two aircraft, they said, had been shot down. The others had been forced to leave, shedding their payloads in the desert without causing any damage whatsoever.

Nothing else was ever said. The Israelis denied the incident had occurred. The US State Department said they had only heard second-hand reports, contradictory at best. To this day, both Syria and Israel, two countries that had technically been at war with each other since the founding of the Jewish state in 1948, played down the raid, even though it had been an act of war.

The reality was much more interesting. Immediately Cody Zero One reported the target destroyed, I’d closed down the gear, sorted myself out, and gone down for a nightcap with Diane.

While I was doing that, the Israeli prime minister called the Turkish prime minister and explained the facts of life. He told him about the ten Israeli F-15s they must have tracked going out into the Med, and asked him to give President Assad of Syria a call. ‘Fuck you, Assad,’ was the message. ‘We will not tolerate a nuclear plant. But no other hostile action is planned.’

Olmert said he was going to play down the incident, and was still interested in making peace with Damascus. If Assad didn’t draw attention to the Israeli strike either, those talks could go ahead. The Americans wouldn’t say a word - apart from relaying the message that they didn’t want them cosying up to the North Koreans, or the Iranians. ‘So, basically, Assad, wind your neck in. No one will say anything, and let’s leave it at that.’

It was a final warning. The Iranians’ reaction had been to entrench themselves. Literally. Since the attack, many of the centrifuges in which they enriched uranium were relocated deep underground. Not even one of the bunker-busting super bombs the Pentagon was trying to get hold of, but was being denied on the grounds of cost, was capable of fully destroying the facilities that the Iranians had at Natanz. And that wasn’t the only one. There were more than a dozen known nuclear facilities in Iran. The Americans and Israelis, and probably the UK too if we got dragged into a war with Iran, were going to be conducting air strikes for weeks.

Al-Kibar was protected by the same Russian-built Tor-M1 air defence system used to protect Iranian facilities. I’d often wondered if Israel’s strike had been a test run to find flaws in Iran’s air defences.

I leant over to check the dashboard clock.

Julian read my mind. ‘He said he’d be there. You know for sure that Lilian’s safe?’

‘Totally.’

There was a barrier across the road ahead. Jules flashed his pass and we were waved on towards the Doughnut.

We pulled in alongside the black BMW again. The driver was on his own this time, in a sweatshirt, still behind the wheel, engine running. He said fuck-all. He just looked over at us and turned back to his DVD, probably pissed off that he’d had to work two weekends running.

We went into the building. A different woman was at the desk, but she treated Julian to the same smile. He handed over his ID and she swiped it through a reader.

‘Good evening, Mr Drogba.’ She tried but couldn’t keep her eyes off Jules’s wounds. ‘A rough game this afternoon?’

She passed him a form to sign.

I was handed my red badge.

‘Could you hand it back in when you leave, Mr Lampard?’

We went through the electronic version of a body search and came out onto the Street. We passed the night shift of Tefalheads, doing whatever they did. They were probably still trying to find out what the fuck I’d been up to.

I followed Jules along the bright fluorescent-lit corridor and into the same room as before. This time there was no glow from the plasma screens on the walnut veneer above Tresillian’s head. It was dark and gloomy. The air-conditioning hummed as I closed the door behind us. We crossed the deep pile carpet towards the big oval table.

Tresillian was watching us. He wasn’t a happy bunny. But he soon cheered up when he saw the state of Jules.

‘Mr Stone, I now see why Julian was so eager for us to meet this evening.’ He sat back in his leather swivel chair, elbows on the arms, fingers steepled beneath his chin. He was in a scruffy jumper and trousers. Maybe he had his pyjamas on underneath. ‘Sit.’