The handyman was a retired soldier – good with roses, paintbrushes and a screwdriver, but his conversation was limited. The bodyguard was eating quickly, shovelling the food into his mouth and enviously eyeing the glass of beer at Yuri’s place. Finally finished, he pushed his seat back and wordlessly went to relieve his partner.
Yuri ate silently, smiling occasionally at the handyman and wishing that his company for the evening would arrive. He didn’t so much want to jump into bed with someone as he wanted someone to talk to. Mrs Hogan suggested it was the real reason he had finally left Russia – the secrets, the hidden smiles, the furtive embraces. Here in the west, she had said, one could be gay and proud of it. He liked that word and smiled to himself as if it was all a bit of a joke. Then he lifted another fork of Mrs Bennet’s pie to his lips.
The two figures crossed the wall at the alarm system’s weakest point. Directional microphones set into the shrubbery at intervals backed up the pressure wires that surrounded the large garden, but where they silently dropped to the ground the mics had been removed after constant interference from the electricity substation on the road’s edge.
The leading man, garbed in black, pointed out the line of the wire in the darkness and together they moved forward towards the house. Time was short.
The bodyguard patrolling the grounds almost walked into them as he skirted the greenhouse. as he jerked his weapon up toward the moving shadow and dived down into the only available cover, he never saw the second figure, just felt the milliseconds of unbelievable pain as the nine-inch blade drove into his spinal column at the base of his skull.
The other bodyguard was eating opposite Yuri at the table when the two men burst through the door. He rose spinning, snatching the gun off the table in one fluid motion, kicking the table over his charge as the first of the nine millimetre parabellum rounds hit him in the chest, throwing him backwards through the air like a rag doll.
The same gunman turned his weapon on the Russian and fired a measured burst from three feet. The second man fired a scything burst that knocked the handyman backwards into the kitchen, then ran through to finish the job. There he also found Mrs Bennet, who died trying not to drop the fruit salad, a look of abject disappointment on her face as the crystal bowl shattered, splattering sticky peach juice all over her spotless floor.
The car carrying Yuri’s company arrived forty minutes later. He was a male prostitute who had been used by MI6 on several occasions and was well compensated for his tasks, most of which he thoroughly enjoyed. His driver felt uneasy at the gates when his efforts on the horn were ignored.
“Wait here,” he said, “and don’t fuckin’ move.” With that he climbed the gates, calling all the time to lessen the chance of being mistaken for an intruder.
Minutes later, he was back. Without a word, he turned the car around and drove into town looking for a call box, his hands shaking on the wheel.
The Duty Officer at Milburn took the call in the ops room and waved a hand at the two staffers present for a bit of quiet.
“Say again,” he said, “nice clear line but I didn’t catch that,” reminding the caller that the line wasn’t secured.
“I was bringing a fella down to Midhurst... Know who I am?” he said exasperated.
“Yes, go ahead.”
“He won’t be needed. What’s needed is a cleaning team from the office”
The Duty Officer, new to the post, wasn’t up on the latest Milburn jargon.
“A cleaning team? What on earth...”
“Fucksakes! We’ve been hit. They’re all fuckin’ dead. Get onto Mr Black or Mr Burmeister. Get ‘em down here now and get the local nick advised to keep clear.”
“Oh Jesus…”
He dropped the phone and took the stairs three at a time hoping that Burmeister was still in the building.
Burmeister arrived back at Milburn just before midnight in the company of Adrian Black, the officer in charge of counter espionage. Black was a stocky man, the son of a Yorkshire miner, who had been recruited from the Metropolitan Police Special Branch by MI5 and later transferred to MI6 after a personality clash with the head of their Counter Espionage Section. He spoke appalling German, hated computers – and was, Callows thought, the best counter intelligence officer he’d even seen, a man with the real ability to break down the component parts of a problem into their simplest form and deal with each without ever losing sight of the whole.
In his office, Sir Martin stood in front of a small heater that blew warm air.
“Well?” he snapped. “What the hell happened?”
“Two men, over the wall. Took out the first man outside, entered, killed FRUIT GUM and the remainder of the staff and left immediately. No-one seems to have heard a bloody thing. Spent casings were nine mill. The lab people have what forensic evidence we could muster.”
“Summary?” Sir Martin asked abruptly.
“They were after FRUIT GUM. That seems certain. The rest were incidental. Very professional. Very slick.”
“Very unlike the KGB,” Black added.
Burmeister said nothing.
“Say again?’
“Too messy,” Black went on. “We’ve seen their assassinations over the years. Poisons, advanced untraceable chemicals, maybe a well-placed bullet if absolutely necessary. This butcher’s shop? No way.”
“I disagree,” Burmeister said quickly. “This would be just like them, a break in pattern…”
“All the risk for some middle-aged poofter analyst? Not the Centre we know and love. Not unless he knew something he shouldn’t have and...”
“What makes you think that?” Burmeister snapped.
“...the hit was set up very quickly,” Black concluded. “No time to import a specialist.”
Sir Martin often used the fact that the two men disliked each other – and that both were fiercely ambitious
