and the butt of an automatic pistol.
Beyond him, the front door of the house swung open and another man peered out. It wasn’t Nicholson, and Westwood heaved a sigh of relief. That had been one of their worries, since Richter’s plan called for Westwood to get inside the house before any of them realized who he was.
‘Your name?’ the man standing beside the car demanded.
‘Mike Murphy,’ Westwood said. ‘I’m expected here.’
The guard gestured for Westwood to lift his arms above his head and then frisked him expertly. He found the Browning almost immediately – Westwood had simply tucked it into the rear waistband of his trousers – removed the magazine and worked the slide to eject the round already in the breach, then tossed the pistol and the magazine onto the driver’s seat of the Chrysler.
When he was checked again, Westwood realized that the man was looking for a wire. After a moment, the guard stepped back, satisfied. ‘Follow me,’ he said.
At the front door of the house, the other guard stood waiting and now stepped back to precede Westwood into the building.
As Westwood walked down the hallway, he prayed again that Richter was up to it.
The moment the outside guard turned to escort Westwood to the front door, Richter moved. He slipped through the hedge and ducked down immediately. As soon as the patrolling guard was out of sight, he stood up again and sprinted across to the house, flattening himself against the wall and concealed between two large bushes. Whichever direction the guard now approached from, he would hear the man’s footsteps on the gravel path before the guard could see him. That was all the edge Richter needed.
He eased the SIG P226 from the waistband of his trousers. The extra length of the attached silencer made the weapon much more cumbersome than a normal pistol, but Richter was more than willing to trade that inconvenience for the ability to fire nearly silently.
But the guard moved much more quietly than expected, and he was within ten feet of Richter’s hiding place before he heard him. Richter eased back against the wall and ducked down slightly, waiting for the man to pass. But as the guard drew level, his peripheral vision must have detected the intruder for he swung around, simultaneously grabbing for his shoulder holster.
Richter dropped the silenced SIG and launched himself off the wall like a torpedo out of a tube. He didn’t want to kill the guard: he had no quarrel with him or the other two men inside the house. They were just doing a job, maybe hired for the day or perhaps junior CIA agents. But Richter needed to subdue him quickly, because the clock was already running.
Westwood followed the guard across the entrance hallway and into a spacious inner hall. Before the man proceeded any further he stopped and motioned for Westwood to lift his arms above his head.
‘The guy outside just checked me,’ Westwood said, raising his hands.
‘And now I’m checking you.’
Apparently satisfied, he gestured for Westwood to follow him again, heading towards a door set in wooden panelling, which Westwood knew led down to the underground briefing-room. So far, things were going more or less as Richter had predicted.
Outside the soundproof entrance of the cellar room below, he pressed the bell twice. Then he opened the door, pushed Westwood inside, and pulled it closed behind him.
The lighting in the briefing-room was bright and harsh after the comparative gloom of the house above, and Westwood had absolutely no difficulty in recognizing the other figure in the room, seated at a small table. But Nicholson stared back for a few seconds without apparent recognition before his face darkened.
‘Westwood, you meddling bastard,’ he spat. ‘Where’s Murphy?’
‘Murphy didn’t make it.’
Nicholson nodded as if it was the answer he had been half-expecting. ‘I suppose you think you’ve been clever, trying to trace me through the database.’
‘Seems I succeeded.’
‘Whatever,’ Nicholson waved a hand dismissively. ‘I was going to arrange for you to have an accident anyway,’ he added, picking up a pistol from the table and levelling it at Westwood’s stomach, ‘but now I won’t bother. You can just disappear.’
‘Dead bodies have a habit of turning up inconveniently.’ Westwood forced a certain bravado into his voice.
‘Not in this case. There’s a disused well just about five miles from here. It’s not marked on any maps, and it’s full of the bones of people who’ve been foolish enough to cross me. I’ll cut your tongue out just to keep you quiet, then I’ll drop you down it, and you’d better pray the fall kills you. Otherwise it’ll take you days to die.’
Even used to the hardened attitudes of his Company colleagues, Westwood was shocked by the ruthless venom evident in Nicholson’s tone, and again prayed silently that Richter knew what he was doing.
As Richter crashed headlong into the guard, he groped for the man’s hands as they tumbled backwards onto the neatly trimmed lawn fringing the gravel path. The guard had managed to pull out his pistol – a nine-millimetre Austrian Glock – and was trying to bring it to bear when Richter grabbed his right wrist and twisted it up and back.
‘Pull the trigger now, and it’ll be the last thing you do,’ Richter panted in the man’s ear, pushing his hand further back until the pistol barrel was directly under the guard’s chin.
As the man suddenly relaxed. Richter seized the barrel of the Glock with his left hand and twisted it away. But at that moment the guard brought his left knee up hard towards Richter’s groin. Feeling the sudden movement, Richter twisted sideways, taking the impact on his outer thigh, as he tossed the Glock behind him.
The guard pulled himself away and scrambled to his feet. Richter recognized immediately from his stance that he’d been trained in one of the martial arts.
‘I think you’re forgetting something.’ Westwood took his eyes from the barrel of the pistol and looked up at Nicholson’s face. ‘If you kill me, you’ll never recover the CAIP file and those flasks. I’ve already made certain they’ll get into the hands of someone who can ensure the maximum exposure.’
For a moment, Nicholson just stared at him, then he threw back his head and laughed.
‘I expected better from you, Westwood. Do you have any idea how corny that routine sounds? It’s just bullshit and you know it.’
‘You want to take a chance that I’m bluffing? Walter Hicks knows where I am. He knows that I’m meeting you here.’
Nicholson stood up and moved closer. ‘The most Hicks can possibly know is that you’re supposed to be meeting a man named McCready. There’s absolutely nothing to tie me to McCready, so I’m quite happy to take the risk. Even if you have lodged the evidence with someone else, I can soon persuade you to cancel your arrangements.’
‘Dream on,’ Westwood murmured.
‘It’s no dream. You’re vulnerable, Westwood, and you know it. I reckon if I strapped your wife and kids into a row of chairs in front of you and started cutting slices off them you’d change your mind real quick.’
Nicholson smiled and, for the first time in his life, Westwood literally felt his blood run cold – a cliche come hideously to life – as he realized Nicholson would do exactly what he threatened. The man’s life and his career were on the line, and he would do whatever it took to contain the situation.
The guard stepped forward, left arm extended in front of him, the hand open and ready to grab, his right hand flattened into a killing blade, just waiting for the opportunity to strike.
Karate. Richter recognized the stance, but still he didn’t move. The man took another step forward, then lunged for Richter’s jacket with his left hand, his right swinging downwards and sideways. If the blow had connected it could have broken Richter’s neck, but the moment the guard moved, so did his opponent.
Richter stepped forward, blocked the strike with his left hand and turned to his left, stepping under the guard’s right arm and seizing his wrist with both hands. Then he straightened up, pulling the guard’s arm down
