‘That’s what we do then. I’ll make the call right now; it could take a while to get through to him, so in the meantime, why don’t you guys go back and talk to the two stooges on the gate. Get them to tell you how come they let Stephen Donn in last night, but didn’t log him out.’
‘Right. And I’ll get them to confirm that there was only him in the driver’s cab.’
‘Could there have been a helicopter pilot hidden in the back, with Dawn?’
‘No way. You couldn’t have got Danny de Vito in there with her.’
I was in the doorway, and Miles had his hand on the phone, when I remembered that penny, the other one that had dropped earlier, only I’d neglected to pick it up. ‘Hey,’ I asked. ‘Do you have the shooting schedule here for the whole project? A file that shows who’s due where on what days?’
‘Sure.’ He rose from the chair behind the desk and went back to the filing cabinet, found another folder and handed it to me. I read it silently, put it back, then headed off with Prim to question the security guards. As I did, I was beginning to think a very bad thought.
As it turned out, only one guard had been in the hut at the main gate when Stu Queen had talked his way in, with his security pass, to retrieve a piece of equipment he had left. And, as it turned out further, that guard had gone for an extended comfort pause when his mate had returned, and had assumed that the guy in the van must have checked out while he was enthroned.
Miles was waiting for us at the door of the disguised office when we returned from our interrogation. I had got tough with the guys at the finish, warning them that their continued employment was in my hands, so they had better keep their mouths tight shut not just about that incident, but about our visit. . at least, I thought but didn’t say, until the leasing company which owned the Jet Ranger found out that it was missing.
‘Well,’ I asked. ‘You got the PM on-side?’ I don’t think I had really believed him earlier.
He looked at me, just a little crestfallen. ‘Yes, ‘he answered, ‘but only up to a point. I told him the whole story. He was appalled; he’s got a crush on Dawn, I think. I tried to persuade him that you and I should go in alone, and eventually, he had his staff make a call to Australia. They faxed him my service record; once he’d read that he said I could go on the operation. . but it has to be led by the Special Boat Service.
‘He’s gone off to speak to the Home Secretary and the Chief of the Defence staff, to get the support teams lined up, and to square the whole operation with the Dutch Prime Minister. He doesn’t think that will be a problem.’
‘What about me?’ I was actually beginning to feel disappointed; looking back on it, I must have been crazy.
Miles grinned. ‘He took some persuading, but you’re included. I told him that there are a lot of people on my movie crews, and one or two of them — like Donn — never become familiar faces to me. I finally convinced him that, since the one photograph we have is blurred, you are the only person who can identify Stephen Donn straight away, if we find him on board.’
When I get a bit nervous, usually there’s this wee hamster which starts doing revolutions on a wheel in the pit of my stomach. Not this time, though; this time it felt like a big black rat, its claws pounding at the treadmill. It took me more than a few seconds to bring it, and myself, back under control.
From that moment I couldn’t think about anything else but what we were going to have to do.
‘When do we go in?’ I asked.
‘Dawn,’ he replied; I was secretly pleased that now he looked as nervous as I felt. ‘Appropriate, eh.’
Chapter 52
The sun wasn’t up, but the sky was lightening, pink in the east. It was seven-twenty — Central European Time, since we were on the Continent, in theory at least.
In fact we were on a Dutch pilot cutter, having sailed out of Rotterdam about ninety minutes earlier. A Royal Marine detachment had flown us over from Aldershot barracks in one of their two assault helicopters. The squad was on-shore, locked and loaded, ready for back-up action if required, but their commanding officer was at sea with us, ready to lead the raid.
The wetsuit felt strange to me. I hadn’t told Miles any porkies about my scuba experience, but it had been a while since I had done anything serious, and longer than that since I had dived in North Sea conditions.
‘Right, gentlemen,’ barked the Marine Lieutenant, whose name was Ardley; he was the youngest of the four of us in the ship’s small wardroom, no more than twenty-five, I guessed. ‘If you’ll look here. .’ He unrolled a chart on the table, then held the corners in place using mugs as paperweights. The thought of Stephen Donn’s nuts came viciously to me as I looked at them.
He pointed at the map. ‘At this moment, we are here, in this navigation channel, sailing north-eastwards. Our closest point to the platform will come in eleven minutes and we will be half a mile away from it. At that point we will slow for a few seconds and you two, Sergeant Roper, and I will go into the water, from the port side of the vessel, to avoid any tiny chance of our being seen by anyone on board the rig.’
I felt a fresh wave of panic sweep over me, but I fought it off. ‘We will submerge to a depth of a few feet, and approach the platform underwater, maintaining a south-south-westerly course which will take you straight to it. When we see the legs we will dive a bit deeper, to ensure that our approach cannot be seen from above.’
He rolled up the chart and produced a plan, which he spread out on the table. ‘This is the lay-out of Beta platform. It has four strong metal legs, as you can see. The access ladder is attached to this one, on the north west corner. When we climb it, we will reach a walkway. We’ll leave our tanks and other unnecessary equipment there, and make ready to enter the platform.’
‘That’s going to be the difficult part, isn’t it?’ Miles murmured.
‘Easier than you think. When this platform was operational, there was an emergency escape pod, right at its base. It’s not there any more, but the ladder and latch which led into it, they are. They’re accessed through a door in a store-room, but also from the walkway. That’s where we head for; we find it, climb the ladder and we’re inside.’
We nodded, as the lieutenant continued. ‘As you can see from the plan, all the working parts of this installation are in the lower levels, with accommodation above, just below the helideck and hangar. Operationally, the place was run by three people. So we won’t have much to search. There are three cabins, a mess, the shower room and heads, and a galley — that’s it.
‘The stairway which leads up to the living module comes out here, next to the heads. We’ll be in a corridor, without windows, which may or may not be lit. Better for us if it isn’t. We’ll carry torches, but even on the lower level, we’ll use these night-glasses.’ He reached under the table and produced two headsets, which looked like strap-on spectacles for a very, very short-sighted man. I recognised them as night-glasses from a Territorial Army ad on which I’d done the voice-over.
‘How do we carry those?’ I asked him.
‘We won’t have weights on this dive. We’ll carry these and our other equipment in watertight bags, strapped to our chests.’
‘What other equipment?’
Ardley reached under the table again, and produced a black metal automatic pistol, fitted with a silencer. I gulped. It must have been pretty theatrical, for the other three grinned at me. Until then, Sergeant Roper had been impassive. He was only a wee man, around the same age as me, but his lined face looked as if it had been carved out of stone.
‘Don’t worry, Mr Blackstone,’ said the officer. ‘This is for Mr Grayson. He’s firearms qualified; you’re not. No offence, but no way would I have you following behind me on an op with a loaded weapon.’