‘Hang on, sir,’ said Lucy.
‘What?’
‘It’s been on the news. Westway is closed and the North Circular is jammed solid because of it. Traffic heading west is at a standstill out there.’
‘That’s okay, Lucy,’ said Sam. ‘We weren’t going to drive anyway. We’re in a bit of a hurry.’
His face was as impassive as those on the big stone statues you see on Easter Island, but I could hear the amusement in his voice.
Bastard.
Chapter 101
I said before that London is a beautiful city.
And it is. But it’s designed to be viewed from the ground, looking up at the gloriously eclectic mix of Georgian architecture and futuristic high-rise buildings. As it was now, though, it was looking more like a scene from Blade Runner as the helicopter banked and headed west.
Private has its own helicopter pad on the roof of its building. Civilians weren’t supposed to have them in the metropolis. Al-Fayed had notoriously tried for years to get one on the roof of Harrods and had failed. But we were under contract to the police and the military and had special dispensation.
Sam Riddel held a full pilot’s licence, enabling him to fly a number of aircraft including the one we were in. He looked across at me and grinned.
I was assuming that he wouldn’t be able to read my expression. I had blacked my face, as had Suzy and Del Rio behind me. Like them, I was also wearing black military fatigues. It was dark now and the cloud cover ahead thankfully blocked the light of a full moon.
I had decided that a small team was the best option. Stealth rather than a show of force. Get it wrong and we could pay the price. Or Harlan Shapiro would pay the price. And that was not an option. Lucy had come with us to retrieve the rope and Hannah had been left behind at the offices. A couple of security guards with her in case she decided to switch sides again.
I ignored Sam’s taunting grin and kept my gaze fixed ahead. Below me the traffic was as snarled as Lucy had said it would be. Above us the chopper’s rotor blade thwopped and spun, but the ride was incredibly smooth. Thankfully there was very little wind.
In very little time we had made the twenty-six mile journey and were flying over Moor Park.
Normally a helicopter flying over a residential area might have caused some interest. But a huge military base, much of it underground, was half a mile away. HMS Warrior where Western Allied Fleet Command was based. The command centre for the Falklands War and also home to the USAF which had a base there. Helicopters in the air thereabouts were a very common occurrence.
As we flew over the target house I pointed the thermal-image device I was holding at it and put the lens to my eyes. The house went the familiar murky green you get through night-vision goggles, but little dots of colour appeared. Glowing red and indicating the heat signatures of human beings. Live ones, anyway. I counted six. Four moving downstairs and two static ones upstairs. I figured those to be Harlan Shapiro and whoever was guarding him. I hoped that was the case, anyway – it meant he was alive, at least.
The helicopter banked again. I hated when it did that and was sure that Sam did it deliberately. The Palestinian translator’s house was set apart from the others in a small private road that led to Moor Park Golf Course. Famous for hosting the Bob Hope Classic for a number of years, but most notable for the current clubhouse having once been the residence, along with Hampton Court Palace, of one Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, ill-fated adviser to Henry the Eighth and the man who had given his name to the university where Harlan Shapiro had sent his daughter to be safe.
The irony was not lost on me.
Sam manoeuvred the helicopter to a hovering standstill. Lucy opened the door and threw out the long black rope, one end fixed securely inside. At least, I damn well hoped it was securely fixed.
Del Rio checked that his pistol was firm in its holster and went out first, grabbing the rope and sliding down it as easily as if it were a fireman’s pole.
I was next. I clipped the harness ring round the rope, checked it and took a deep breath. I was earning my pay cheque this weekend, no doubt about that. But I had trained to abseil. Just because I didn’t like it didn’t mean I couldn’t do it. I didn’t say ‘Geronimo’. I said something entirely less gleeful and stepped out, dropping down the rope in short sequences. The rope was still some eight feet from the ground when I released fully and dropped.
We had picked a soft target. The seventeenth green on the West Course. A short par four, surrounded on three sides by trees.
Not long afterwards Suzy thudded to the ground a few yards from me. Less than thirty seconds after that and all three of us were thankfully back on terra firma.
I looked at the damage that we had done to the soft ground and guessed that the greenkeeper would be none too happy come the morning.
I signalled to the others and we headed off. The house was some hundred yards away behind the trees. As we moved into the cover of them no alarm sounded – no sirens, no shouting.
So far, so good.
A movement behind me. I turned too late.
I dropped like a felled tree.
Chapter 102
Some time later I came to and tried to move.
I couldn’t. My hands had been tied behind my back to a wooden chair. Suzy and Del Rio sat beside me, similarly trussed.
My head felt like I’d landed on it when I’d dropped from the helicopter. But I was alive and I was conscious. I guess my skull was a bit thicker than Chloe’s, which would be unusual. Female skulls are usually a little thicker than men’s. Maybe whoever had hit me hadn’t been as good as Chloe’s attacker.
We were in the lounge of a very expensively decorated house. There was colour everywhere. Golds and reds and greens. On the expensive rugs that dotted the floor, on the wallpaper that covered the walls, on the drapes that were curled back from the French windows that led out to an extensive lawn, and on the exquisitely upholstered furniture.
I lifted my head and looked across at Suzy and Del Rio, wincing as the pain nailed through the back of my head.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘You were hit with a golf club.’
‘A driver,’ added Suzy. ‘Titleist, I think.’
‘And you guys?’
‘People stepped out with semi-automatic weapons. A few of them. We considered it politic to comply with their instructions.’
‘Hard to argue with an AK-47’
Del Rio nodded. ‘That is a fact.’
‘So what’s the plan?’
‘Not formulated one as such.’
At that moment Harlan Shapiro walked into the room.
Chapter 103
Harlan Shapiro’s mouth was bound with duct tape and he held his hands high in the air.
He was followed in by Annabelle Weston holding a gun, and by a woman wearing the full burka.
‘So it was the professor in the drawing room with the revolver all along,’ I said.
‘Sit over there,’ Annabelle said to Harlan, ignoring me and gesturing with her gun to a high-backed red leather chair.
Harlan Shapiro crossed over and sat down. Outside, a large man in black fatigues and with a scarf wrapped round his head walked past the French windows.
Mujahedin as security guards. Nice neighbourhood.
‘And you must be Mary Angela,’ I said, addressing the woman in the burka. ‘Shame to cover yourself up – you have beautiful eyes.’
The woman swept her hand up, removing the part of her garment covering her head, and swinging her lustrous hair behind her. She looked at me and smiled.
‘That’s very courteous of you to say so.’
I must have registered some surprise because her smile deepened. ‘Oh, I only wear it when it suits.’