He completed the task wordlessly and then, dropping the gun into his lap, picked up the wad of documents he had scooped from the Dutchman’s pocket.
“Thought I recognised him,” he said, thinking out loud.
“Who?” Quayle asked, concentrating on the road.
“The driver. Name’s Hoogstad. I saw him work once in Bremen. Freelancer. He was good.”
“Not that good,” Quayle qualified.
“He made a mistake,” Pope said, almost with respect. “It only takes one. He was first team.”
“What? You all know each other?” Holly asked, appalled.
“We know of each other,” Pope corrected.
“And what? Have drinks, do you? Talk about your kills like fighter pilots?” She was angry now, the tension breaking out as aggression, tears in her eyes.
Pope let her rant on for a minute or two, until she fell silent. Then he turned in his seat. “The last time I saw him, he was crawling up a sewer in his underpants, lying in the shit with the rats. He had a knife in his mouth and a handgun in the hand he wasn’t pulling with. He crawled into a room with four real nutters! Three Red Brigade and an Arab. They had the twelve year old daughter of a Greek banker, and they’d already cut one of her nipples off. He went in and did the job he was paid to do... Sometimes we have our place, and for the sensitive people like you it never makes the papers. Now, I didn’t like him, but I hand loaded his rounds that time. If he hadn’t been on this job, I may well have had him load for me one day. You don’t have to like what I do. That’s your privilege. Just be glad that you’re alive to do it.”
He turned back to face the front and, as her anger cooled, she studied him with new respect, feeling a little foolish for her outburst.
*
The Director General of MI6 was routinely chauffeured in an expensive black Jaguar, but tonight he waited in a fully licensed and registered taxi, perfect in every detail – except that the driver had been hand-picked by Scotland Yard. He had previously driven senior naval officers and was given to nautical expressions, but now he sat in silence, staring straight ahead. In the back Sir Gordon Tansey-Williams sat back, his coat wrapped tightly around his knees.
Morris, the driver, half turned his head. “That’s him, Sir Gordon,” he said.
“You’re sure?” Sir Gordon lifted his head to stare out into the dark.
“Aye, sir.”
“Ask him to join us, will you, Mr Morris?”
Stepping from the car, he pulled his jacket closer and ran across the wet street to intercept the man.
Knowing something of the background to tonight’s meeting, he decided it was prudent to approach from the front and slowly.
“Jonno Smith?”
The man had a curious gait, his back twisted so that one shoulder rode higher than the other. He peered at Morris from under a tangle of wet curly hair. “Who wants to know?”
“I’m from Century. My governor would like a word.” Morris nodded across the street.
“Then phone me at the office,” Smith answered.
Morris stepped forward, his hands raised in a friendly manner. “Look…”
“Take another step and I’ll break your fucking arms,” Smith snarled.
Morris stopped dead. He knew the crippled man was quite capable of carrying out his threat.
“They said you were an aggressive little prick,” he laughed nervously. “Look, just cross the street. Look into the cab. If you don’t recognise the man inside then keep walking and he’ll phone you tomorrow. On your direct line – which is the blue phone on the corner of your desk below the pin-up. The red head with the big tits.”
Smith studied him for a minute. The information was correct. “You stay here,” he said.
“That’s never going to happen, son. He’s my responsibility.”
Smith nodded slowly. Any other answer would have been suspect. All official drivers doubled as routine bodyguards for the senior people they chauffeured.
As he got closer, the door opened and the interior light flashed on. Smith recognised the occupant immediately and, shaking the rain from his tired old coat, he climbed into the back.
“Sorry, sir.”
Sir Gordon made conciliatory noises as Morris nosed the cab into the evening traffic. Then he came directly to the point. “A little birdie tells me that you think that you’ve been ‘got at’. I’d like to hear about that...” He looked at Smith through eyes that gazed lovingly at his grandchildren at weekends and terrified Cabinet members during the week. “All about that if you will.”
Two hours later, the taxi stopped up the street from Smith’s flat and, dropping him off, headed immediately to Upton Manor where it stopped outside a small terraced house with a pocket handkerchief garden. Sir Gordon knocked at the door and, as he did so, a dark closed van that had been outside most of the evening pulled away. He waited a few seconds and the door was opened by a short chubby black girl in a dressing gown.
“Good evening, Miss Bowie. We haven’t met but my name is Tansey-Williams. I believe you are alone. May I come in?”
She looked at him for a second.
“Hang on. The Tansey-Williams?” she asked, hand on substantial hip.
He nodded and she swung the door open, her bright eyes quizzical. Soon, she had made him a cup of tea and, assuming he hadn’t eaten, quickly made him a bacon sandwich as well. Finally, she sat at his feet in front of a small gas heater and listened to what he had to say.
*
Quayle pulled into the parking building just as it was opening for business, the Munich streets beginning to get crowded. They had driven most of the night using back roads, stopping frequently and doubling back to check on followers. They had changed vehicles twice in that time,
