with several specialized courses and an occasional stint of surveillance followed by more paperwork and meetings. Now this pointless bloody caper. Carlisle, his predecessor on this job, must have had some internal pull to have been able to dump this in his lap. Just wait until he caught up with him.
He watched a taxi pull in to the kerb across the street, double-parking close to a delivery van. The rear offside door of the cab opened and a tall, rangy blonde stepped out. She wore calf-length boots and a short skirt, and as she slid her feet to the ground, she showed a long expanse of smooth thigh. She caught Bentley looking and smiled.
Bloody hell, he thought, sitting up. Maybe pulling this stint wasn’t so bad after all. .
As Bentley was fantasizing about his chances with the tall blonde, the man named Dog took the stairs down to the basement washroom. He was breathing easily, even though he had jogged nearly all the way after the encounter with the two men in St James’s Park. His face was flushed, and not from the exertions; he was feeling an unaccustomed burn of anger at the way things had turned out.
He kicked the washroom door back, causing a tall, cadaverous Somali cleaner to scuttle out without looking back.
It was Jennings’ fault, Dog decided. Him and the idiots pulling his strings. Just a few more paces, that’s all he’d needed. If it hadn’t been for the two former spooks Jennings had hired, he’d have been home and dry, another contract in the bag.
He splashed cold water over his face, a trigger to calm his nerves. If he’d used a handgun back in the park, the outcome would have been very different. But waving a firearm in central London was a ticket to assisted suicide, and he’d been confident of achieving the same ends with a blade. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
He gulped some water and spat it out. He shouldn’t have scared the cleaner; it wasn’t his fault, and kicking off like that only attracted attention. It was time to reassess his options and adapt. It was what he’d been trained to do, and you never ignored the training; you changed your plans to move with the circumstances. The first thing to do was get some transport. Something easy to move and conceal. Something nobody would look twice at. Another motorbike would do; they were easy to pick up and practically invisible.
He scrubbed his face with a paper towel and tossed it on the floor, then walked back upstairs to the lobby. Instead of going up to his room on the third floor, he went outside. The stuff in the room was minimal and disposable; he’d got spare kit stashed in another room he’d rented at a hostel near Euston. It spread the risk and gave him options in case things blew up on him and he had to leave this place — a habit he’d learned the hard way. Best he didn’t hang around here too long in case the cleaner had called the cops.
As Dog turned out of the hostel and headed along the street towards the station, he noticed a figure in a car parked on a yellow line fifty yards away. Nothing unusual in that; just another motorist among many in a busy street.
Yet a deep-seated instinct made him stop, his heart picking up a beat.
The vehicle was facing away from him, dusty and unremarkable, a couple of years old. The driver was staring at a blonde girl legging it along the opposite pavement. He was young and looked as if he was waiting for someone.
But Dog didn’t think so. He took three steps and slid into a doorway that put him in the man’s blind spot, and waited. Two minutes later, after the driver made a brief, one-sided phone call, he knew he’d been right: the driver wasn’t waiting — he was a watcher.
Dog stepped out of the doorway and walked towards the car. He slipped his hand into his pocket. He hugged the shadows, head down but watching the car’s wing mirror, where he could see the pale oval of the driver’s face. The man was still eyeing the blonde. Silly sod. The lack of professionalism made Dog angry. Not that he gave a stuff about the man himself, but the sheer disregard for the rules of the game was an insult.
He gripped the knife against his leg.
He’d been told to expect this, that sooner or later he’d pop up on someone’s radar. He’d been doing this job a long time, and that made him noticeable. But that wasn’t what annoyed him. Was this what they really thought of him — sending some junior, pasty-faced prick fresh out of the training centre to watch his every move?
He snicked open the blade. Stopped by the driver’s window and tapped lightly on the glass. Glanced each way to check the immediate area. There was nobody close by, which gave him a small window of opportunity. He’d had worse.
The driver lowered the window instinctively and looked up just as Dog stepped in close and took his hand out of his pocket. The knife had a narrow blade, a souvenir of his last tour in Kosovo, and clearly had one purpose: it was a killing tool.
The driver’s eyes fastened on it instantly, his face draining of colour as he realized his mistake. Hardly more than mid-twenties, thought Dog. Probably a university intake on his first observation. He smiled, pleased that his instincts were still sound.
‘Should have kept your eyes off the girls, kid,’ Dog said softly. ‘That’s sloppy tradecraft.’
He inserted the point of the knife into the man’s ear, and with a sharp pump of his arm, rammed it all the way home.
He smiled.
The day hadn’t been a complete waste.
FORTY-THREE
Rik led the way to a sandwich bar just off Victoria Street. On the way, the wail of emergency vehicles echoed over the rooftops from the direction of Victoria Station. Hopefully it was nothing to do with them, but they stayed close to the buildings, anyway. There was no sense in taking chances, even though they had no reason to think they were yet on anyone’s ‘watch’ list.
It reminded Harry to try Jennings’ number again. They hadn’t heard from the lawyer, and instinct told him they weren’t likely to. But he was their only point of contact to this business.
There was no answer.
Rik scooped up a selection of rolls, cakes, coffee and fruit juice all round, while Harry kept an eye on the street, less interested in eating than trying to figure out what to do next. Joanne stood silently nearby, wrapped in her own thoughts.
When they were sitting around a table and eating, Rik leaned forward and said around a mouthful of French stick, ‘OK, so what’s the plan? We need to get this thing moving, right? I can’t stand this waiting around.’
Harry said, ‘I’ve been thinking about that.’ He peeled off a chunk of bread and chewed on it thoughtfully. Planning was something he was good at, but it only worked if you got it right and didn’t trip over your own feet. Trouble was, they were all stumbling in the dark here, and there were no clear rules to follow.
‘We can’t make contact with Rafa’i until ten tomorrow,’ he reminded them. ‘Not unless we get lucky and bump into him in the street — and that’s not going to happen.’ He tore off another piece of bread, his appetite returning. Even Joanne was chewing dutifully, following the soldier’s maxim of eating when you had the chance, because you never know when the next meal will come. ‘In fact, there’s more of a risk that we’ll get marked by the killer before then.’
‘You think he’ll hang around?’ Joanne paused in her eating.
‘Wouldn’t you? He didn’t finish the job. Yes, he’s still around.’
‘OK. So what do we do until tomorrow?’
‘We could go looking for him.’ He smiled to show he was joking. ‘But that wouldn’t be a good idea. We need to find Humphries’ contact, Marshall. He’s the key to this. His sister said he was either Five or Six. Logic says Six, since Humphries was, too. But we need to make sure.’
Rik looked up. ‘What if he’s one of the bad guys?’
‘It’s a risk we have to take. Do you have an alternative?’
Rik threw a look at Joanne with a pained expression. ‘He does this. Whenever we’re at a sticky point and need a plan, he comes up with something and asks if I’ve got anything better.’
