The Old Enemy

text. She got out and looked around in preparation to cross over to the Edgar Building. Samson decided he would have to break cover and get her away from the building – some change in the barometric pressure around the Junction, which maybe only a former intelligence officer would be aware of, told him that the team was ready to make a move. He stepped out of the café and went three paces, but saw that she had pulled out her phone and was reading as she walked. She stopped suddenly on the pedestrian crossing, looked around and turned to head back to Samson’s side of the road. He moved back. At the moment she reached the curb, as yet apparently without recognizing Samson, who was no more than a few metres away, he became aware of a blurred movement in his right field. The beggar was on the move and coming towards them fast. His hood was raised against the rain; both arms were bared and he now wore gloves. In his right hand, held low, there was a blade about six inches long.

Samson’s basic knowledge of self-defence came from a course taken as an SIS officer. He’d only made use of it properly once – in Syria, a man came at him with a knife when he was carrying cash to help trace and free the Kurdish-American doctor Aysel Hisami. Samson had seen that attack coming and had had time to step outside the thrust of the knife, seize the man’s wrist with his right hand and go to work on his face, clawing at his eyes with his left. It had proved remarkably effective and he’d quickly disarmed and knocked out the young fighter, a member of his escort into ISIS-held territory who had been looking for an opportunity to get Samson alone for the previous twenty-four hours. Now Samson had less warning and he had no idea which way the man planned to go. He instinctively blocked the way to Zoe, on his left, and shouted for her to run, but that meant he was still inside the line of thrust. Someone screamed. Samson moved to his right, grabbing the man’s upper arm, forcing it away and, at the same time, delivering a punch to his Adam’s apple, then several rapid upward blows to his chin with the heel of his hand. He was much stronger than Samson and he easily wrestled his arm free. Samson moved back. The man came at him again and Samson aimed a kick at his groin and, taking hold of his upper arm for a second time, headbutted him in the face. These two blows did something to stall the attack, but he was aware that his back was against the café’s window and he had nowhere to go. People had scattered from the pavement and there was now no sign of Zoe. He ducked to his left, but the man pursued him with a boxer’s dance, jabbing the air with the knife. Samson was aware of two new sounds – a woman behind him shouting for the man to drop the knife and the roar of a motorbike that had mounted the pavement and skidded in a 180-degree turn to face away from him. He looked round to see one of the watchers aiming a gun at the beggar, feet splayed and both hands holding the gun. She was a police officer and knew what she was doing. He looked back for the man’s reaction. He simply shrugged and began to back away, smiling with the certainty that the officer could not possibly take a shot at him with so many people about. The beggar leapt on to the back of the bike, took the helmet handed to him by the driver and they sped along the pavement, cleaved a path in the lunchtime crowds then darted through a gap in the traffic and went south.

It was the same motorbike Samson had seen waiting in the tunnel by Embankment station, a ten-year-old Suzuki with the maker’s blue-and-white livery beneath the grime – as old and unremarkable as his own lowly Honda. He had obviously been followed, because the knifeman had arrived outside the café before Zoe. This interested him, for at no stage on his journey from Embankment station had he seen the bike in his mirrors, which led him to one conclusion – his Honda must have been fitted with a tracking device. This thought was followed by a more arresting one – unless they were using him to lead them to Zoe, which was, at least, a possibility, he was the target. But this made no sense whatsoever. What mattered was that Zoe Freemantle had got away from the vicinity of the Edgar Building unharmed and unidentified by the police. That was what he was paid for.

The woman officer who had drawn her gun was anxious to get back to her operation and hurriedly took down his name and address and said someone would be along to talk to him about the ‘incident’. Samson gave her false details and, as soon as she had left, went to his bike, unlocked the helmet box and placed the key in the ignition. Whatever the police presence around the Junction, it wouldn’t be long before the bike, together with the tracker, was stolen from Cooper’s Court. He checked that no police had gone back to the café then left the area, noticing that the minor matter of a knife attack at the scene had not disrupted the surveillance operation.

He went straight back to Westminster because he needed to check whether the GreenState building was being watched and he also wanted to know Zoe’s reaction to finding him at the Junction. She may not have recognised him immediately, but he had shouted her name during the attack, so she was bound to have spotted him and it would be immediately obvious that he’d been shadowing her. That meant this particular job was over, which was a relief