London
Hampstead
9 a.m.
April 17th
A golden haired nine year old boy, with a freshly scrubbed face presented himself at the door of what was a very austere dining room. He was followed by a golden haired girl, half a foot shorter, with the neatest of pigtails. They were both dressed in green uniforms. The boy was dressed in a crisp white shirt and green and yellow striped tie, green shorts and the girl was dressed in a green check cotton dress; both were holding straw hats in front of them.
A door chime sounded down the hall and a slim yet motherly blonde woman appeared flustered behind the children. Across a dining table strewn with the remnants of breakfast a severe man in his early forties, dressed in a black three piece suit, pale blue shirt and deep blue tie, lowered a tabloid Times.
The serious face with heavy lidded eyes and thin lips creased into a warm smile. Nigel Sternway removed his reading glasses.
“Aha Summer uniforms so it’s April already.”
He beckoned the children to him and kissed them. As they left the room, waving, a tall thin man stopped and let them pass.
“You’re early Joe” Mrs Sternway frowned watching her children exit the room.
She disliked her husband’s employees coming to the house. Joe was Nigel’s number two and drove him around. She disliked Joe. He was grey and pale. He had x-ray eyes. He was tall and thin. He always wore a dark blue suit and a light blue tie, and oddly, she had noticed, that he wore brown boots, the walking kind. He was thin, but he had a wiry quality. She felt him to be like snake, long and thin, with coiled, poisonous potential within the thin frame. Della Sternway hated her husband’s work.
When Joe nodded and offered a weak and ineffective smile she happily followed the golden children, heading for the school run.
“Morning Joe.” Sternway’s smile for his children slipped suddenly from his face.
Joe closed the dining room door.
“Sir. The sub dropped them this morning. They should be heading this way.”
“Good. We’ll see which one gets through then.” Sternway precisely folded his reading glasses, encased them and slipped them into his jacket top pocket.
“If any DIC 's record on malicious intruders is ten to nothing so far.”
“See they do have their uses. You sure this will work?”
“It’s as good a way as any. These men are the best and one should get through and if they don’t we’ll know it can’t be done.”
Sternway looked at his watch.
“Just before nine, a couple of them at least should be in Inverness by now. When we get to the office send Bentall to you know who to have the conversation. Tell him the game’s afoot, oh and he’s to leave the contact package with him.”
They left the house, Joe in front, opening the door of the black Jaguar for Sternway. Once in the driver’s seat, Joe took his revolver out from under it and slipped it into his holster. Della’s rule on guns in the house made him uncomfortable. Joe wondered why she hadn’t become used to such ideas after ten years of marriage to a member of the British Secret Service.
Sternway ran the ‘dirty work’ section at the secret service and the contradiction of Sternway’s warm family life and cold blooded working day reminded Joe of the poem Vultures, by Chinua Achebe. He glanced in the mirror at Sternway’s ‘cold telescopic eyes’.
Chapter 15
Inverness Airport
9- 20 a.m.
April 17th
At Inverness Airport with his coffee and breakfast finished Spencer went to book a flight to Gatwick. He had decided that DIC or not the quicker he moved the better.
Chance was against him though. At the small Flybe desk he found himself embarrassed by the failure of the fake Visa card. There was a seat on the flight, but it wasn’t his for the taking.
He walked out of the airport in a foul mood. The April drizzle might have cooled his hot head, but its niggling needle like drops only increased his annoyance. He checked the thin black wallet for cash and cursed the expensive breakfast, newspaper and coffee for taking nearly ten pounds of the thirty cash they had been given.
The flight was twelve pounds, but the surcharge and taxes took the price up to twenty four. He didn’t have the money for the flight. He wondered why they had been given so little cash and then became angry when he realised that the organisers had assumed that the credit card would work. His didn’t and he had no way to contact then to get it sorted.
He stood briefly in the rain, exasperated, wondering what to do when a taxi stopped in front of him.
“Going into the city my friend?”
The pale, podgy, pudding faced taxi driver called from his open window.
Marco Spencer smiled, but his eyes were predatory and his mind made up. Well he wanted the million. The man looked close to a coronary anyway.
“Sure. I need to go to…” He let it trail off.
“Yeah?” The taxi driver was tired.
It was the end of his night shift and he’d done extra hours; too many really. His last fare had taken him to the airport, so in greed he was looking for a fare to take back, so as not to waste the drive; it would be the last of his shift.
“It’s an address on the east side of the city.”
Marco got in.
“I’ll need better than that.”
“Have you got a map?”
The driver ‘tutted’.
“Sorry friend. There’s a twenty in it if you help me.”
Enthused at least a little by the promise of extra cash the driver got out a map. Spencer made a play of forgetting the exact address and by the time he’d looked at the map he had picked his spot.
“The business man I’m meeting lives on the front, just off the 96 on the way to Milton of Culloden.”
“Sure enough, but it’s gonna cost ya.”
“That’s fine.” The taxi driver took in the long black cashmere coat and smart look of his fare. He thought that the money was there alright.
The taxi driver swung the car around and pulled onto the road thinking he’d soon be at the end of his shift.
In the back, under cover of his smart black coat, Marco pulled the famously silent Russian PSS pistol out of his inside pocket and released the safety catch.
The taxi driver tried to make conversation, but Spencer’s short replies soon put him off. Spencer and his pale, unhealthy taxi driver drove pretty much right around the outskirts of the city and then drove along the ninety six A road in silence. Finally the car turned onto the road by the Moray Firth coastline. Spencer’s pulse quickened and his eyes hardened.
“You sure this is right no?” The taxi driver looked anxiously in the mirror.
Spencer checked for witnesses and there were none. It was a thick drizzle that would keep even the most ardent dog walkers and joggers away from the stretch of coastal roadway.
“I said…”
