One had been by his own doing, and yet he knew that he would do it again until fully satisfied; the other had come out of the blue. He was the focus of suspicion and being investigated. He didn’t know by whom or the reason why, but it would have to be stopped.
He finished his hot drink and was starting to feel a lot better. All he had to do was think positively as he always had done, tackle the problem head-on and then remove it permanently.
CHAPTER THREE
Dillon took a taxi from his apartment to Docklands and the head quarters of Ferran & Cardini International. His stalwart boss, Edward Levenson-Jones, had summoned his presence, so as to bring him up to speed with the conversation he’d had with Dunstan Havelock over dinner.
“The job sounds straightforward enough, but what’s the catch? You know as well as I do, old son, there’s always a catch with Dunstan Havelock.”
“True, but I think he’s being straight on this one. And I gave him a pretty hard time, especially after he’d mentioned Digby’s name.”
“Um, well that may be the case. But remember the golden rule, old son.”
“What golden rule?”
“My golden rule. The one that clearly states there are no true friends in politics and that civil servants, like the Government cabinet ministers whose backsides they wipe, are merely sharks circling for traces of blood to appear in the water.”
“Oh, that golden rule.”
“Being facetious is not helpful, Jake. If you cast your mind back, you’ll remember that the last time this firm got involved with Havelock it almost cost the lives of two very experienced field agents. I do not want a repeat of that fiasco this time. You make sure you write your reports in triplicate and, most importantly, watch your back. By the way, I’m assigning Vince Sharp as your technical support officer. Make sure you keep him informed at all times.”
“Absolutely.”
LJ opened the buff-coloured file in front of him and started to shift paper from one side of his desk to the other. As Dillon was about to leave, he glanced up from over the top of his round wire-framed spectacles.
“Just one more thing before you go. There’s the little matter of firearms.”
“Firearms?”
“Don’t be obtuse; you know very well what I mean. You have a nasty habit of starting small wars wherever you go, Jake. As you so openly demonstrated whilst in Jersey.”
“That’s a bit unfair. After all, I was up against a narcissist fascist who employed paramilitary mercenaries as ship’s crew. Who, if I recall, attempted to murder me and came very close to it on at least two occasions.”
“That may have been the case, but I do not want you roaming around the Dorset countryside with an automatic pistol strapped under your arm. Do I make myself clear?”
“Crystal.”
“Good. Now, I know that you’re not planning to stay down in Dorset tonight. But on your way out, see my secretary — she’ll have a file for you with the operational assignment protocols as well as the details of the apartment located in Lilliput that is at your disposal should the need arise. Also, if this thing goes on for any length of time, go to Salterns Marina and make contact with Frank Gardner. You’ll more than likely find him propping up the bar of the hotel there.”
“Who is he?”
“Frank Gardner. He was one of the best intelligence field officers that MI5 is ever likely to see. Lost his right eye in a shootout with a bunch of terror suspects in Manchester about six years ago, after which he was given the choice of working behind a desk or early retirement. Needless to say he took the sensible option and now lives down there — owns a forty-six foot power cruiser which he moors in the marina. I’d say that both could come in extremely handy, should the need arise.”
Dillon closed the door gently behind him as he left LJ’s office. He picked up the file containing the operational details and went straight to the underground car park to collect his Porsche. With his overnight bag in the boot, he weaved his way through the heavy city traffic towards the M25 motorway, and then down the M3 towards Southampton with the sky turning blue-black, bruised with garish clouds. By the time he’d turned onto the M27, heavy raindrops were killing themselves on the windscreen as he headed towards his destination.
Dillon entered the airfield on the north-west side, driving between industrial buildings and large aircraft hangers, until he reached the helicopter charter company’s low single-storey building located at the edge of the runway. He parked the black sports car on the apron and was immediately escorted to a waiting Robinson R-44 Raven, its rotors already in motion. They were in the air within minutes, flying three hundred feet above the rooftops towards Poole and the Sandbanks peninsula. The pilot headed towards the coast, flew over Bournemouth pier and, a moment later, was skimming over the white sandy beach of Sandbanks. As they rounded the point at the Haven Hotel, Dillon looked down on the port side — the chain ferry linking the peninsular with Studland was mid-channel, fully laden with vehicles and foot passengers. The pilot tacked round to starboard, and gained height as they neared the area Dillon wanted to view from the air.
“Go around the harbour and approach that area over there from the other direction,” Dillon instructed the pilot, and pointed at the individual luxury properties that lined the shoreline below. Virtually all of them had their own mooring, some even had impressive boat houses. Charlie Hart’s mansion had both and a large power cruiser tied up at the bottom of his landscaped grounds. Dillon used the Nikon camera with a long zoom lens attached to get close-up images of every aspect of Hart’s property. Once he’d satisfied himself that he’d seen enough, he instructed the pilot to head back to the airfield. Ten minutes later, the Raven was put down on the airfield apron again. Dillon went and climbed in to the driver’s seat of the Porsche whilst the girl in the office processed the paperwork for the credit card payment. He connected the digital camera to the car’s specially adapted on-board computer system, downloaded the images and simultaneously sent them back to Vince Sharp in London. Thirty seconds later, he received a text message telling him that the file transfer had been successful.
Dillon drove slowly by the gated entrance to Charlie Hart’s mansion. It wasn’t going to be easy to keep watch on the luxury house, especially with double yellow lines on both sides of the road for as far as the eye could see and CCTV cameras everywhere. How things had changed since his last visit to the area, he thought. But he decided to park directly outside the high gated entrance anyway, knowing that there would almost certainly be a camera looking directly at him, and that if Hart was straight he would make a note of the registration number and give it to the police to look into, and then forget the whole thing. But if he wasn’t, he’d probably take steps to find out who it was harassing him.
Ferran & Cardini had the personnel and surveillance capability to easily set up a team to watch Hart’s movements, but first Dillon wanted to see for himself who and what he was up against. It was seven-thirty in the evening, there was a chilled wind coming off the sea, and it had started to drizzle. Dillon glanced up in to his rear-view mirror and immediately realised that a security guard was stood watching him from behind the gateway of a nearby house. In an area like this any suspicious-looking character, no matter what exotic sports car they were driving, would attract attention, and suddenly it seemed a bad idea to hang around any longer.