The Protector: A gripping, action-packed spy thriller Read online

“No,” said Phelps, with conviction. “Not time. Not in two years, anyway. It would take something else. A belief. A new cause – something essentially decent, something pure in spirit perhaps. One of the chaps who dropped the atom bomb on Nagasaki spent years working in an orphanage. He finally came to grips with it.”

  “What else?” Burmeister asked.

  “It’s a matter of will. It’s a matter of wanting to. The human mind is a complex thing. I know as much about it as any man alive. Humans can stave off death by sheer willpower, or they can lie down and die. It all depends on what he has to live for or fight for. If, perhaps, he has loved ones...”

  Burmeister thought suddenly about Morton’s daughter. In the file photo she was attractive. He remembered tousled hair and a freckled smile.

  “What about a woman?” he asked. “Could a woman drive him back?”

  Phelps pursed his lips and thought for a second, inspecting his fingers before answering. “No-one can drive him back, but love is a powerful force. If he found something inherently decent, something he loved, something that needed him, or that he himself needed. It might draw him out. It just might.”

  “And what might happen if someone tried to take that... thing?” Burmeister struggled with the last word.

  “If it was a woman who helped him, and you tried to harm her or take her, you would find him back alright. He would have rediscovered decency and loyalty and you would be attacking it. For how long one couldn’t say, but he would be back – and back with a vengeance.”

  “Capable of what?”

  “Almost anything. Even as a patient he struck me as enormously capable and well trained.” Phelps stood. “Now it’s my turn, Mr Burmeister. Hear me now! Leave him alone. He did his bit and, if he’s making some recovery, then we should all be thankful – because the way he was treated was an absolute disgrace. You are concerned about the fate of your men. That I can understand. If Titus Quayle has met a woman, and she has drawn him back, and if your men threatened her, then you have every reason to be concerned for their safety. They may have gotten precisely what they asked for.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That he should be left alone.”

  “You sound like you’re on his side!” Burmeister snapped.

  “I am on his side, you idiot,” Phelps retorted. “He is my patient!”

  With little ceremony, Burmeister showed him the door and walked back to his desk. He had never liked Titus Quayle, even from the beginning – and since the Berlin incident it had been worse. He hated being shown up by anyone and Berlin was still on his file. He remembered the frightened Romanian girl from their mission and her babbled story and emotional request to see Quayle. He was in Prague at the time, so he told her to go. She had begged for a safe place to hide and he had her slung onto the street by security, irritated by her ridiculous sobbing. She had been snatched from the Embassy doors by her countrymen and Quayle had lost a friend. When he returned, he confronted Burmeister over the issue and Burmeister made a flippant remark. Quayle’s punch snapped off Burmeister’s front teeth and knocked him clear across his secretary’s desk. Now, years later, the wound remained as strong as it had been that day.

  Quayle produced a French driving licence and walked up to the Hertz desk at Milan Airport, smiling widely at the pretty girl behind the counter. Away to his left he could see Holly, an overnight bag over her shoulder, Ouzo bottle in hand. Some way behind her, Pope meandered, seemingly aimlessly, looking every inch the retired civil service type of tourist.

  Quayle used French for the car arrangements. The Panama hat and silk shirt gave him a dashing flamboyant look that the Hertz girl obviously liked, because she pushed her address and phone number across at him with the forms that needed signatures.

  “I will be home this evening,” she said in faultless French.

  “What a shame Cheri, I will be in Verona. A business matter. But another time maybe?”

  “Tres bien,” she smiled. “Call before you come. I will be... available. It’s a silver BMW, three rows back in the rental park.”

  He smiled, tipped his hat and walked away with the keys. Ten minutes later, he collected Holly and Pope in the large car park. In the meantime, he had crumpled the hat and thrown it into a rubbish skip and had slipped on a pair of conservative Germanic spectacles and a lightweight pullover. Holly almost didn’t recognise him.

  The drive to Venice was made in near silence as Holly slept in the back seat and Pope dozed next to Quayle. His gun was in a brown paper bag on his lap and, as they had left the airport, he had reloaded the Teflon rounds into the magazine, then fussed over the new packet of bullets they had collected in Athens, shaking individual rounds and checking the seals on the casings He had had no trouble walking it through security at Athens airport – and Quayle, following him through, cynically thought it was no wonder they had hijackings there.

  Soon he stopped the car at a motor way service area and bought sandwiches from a machine, coffee and a packet of sweets. Back on the road, the tyres humming on the wet surface, Holly sat up in the back, sleepily pushed the hair from her eyes and sipped at the hot bitter drink like it was nectar.

  “God that’s wonderful,” she muttered. “Where are we?” Outside the window, beyond the crash barriers, were wet vineyards and small patchwork fields.

  “About forty minutes to Venice,” Quayle answered.

  “Then what?” she asked, reaching for a packaged sandwich.

  “Sleep for me,” he answered. “Then, tomorrow, I go see a man about a dog. Get some documents done.”

  “Passports?” she asked.

  “Mmmm.”

  “Isn’t that a bit risky?” She leant forward over the seat between the two men. “Don’t they have computers these days? You know, say when one has been stolen?”

  “We’ll only use these ones once or twice. We are in Europe remember. EEC Passports. Half the time you could walk through with just the cover. Just hold the things up, look miserable like every other bastard and walk on by.”

  “And the other half?” she asked.

  “That’s why we’ll get good ones. If they’re looking for us, then it gets more difficult. Then they need to be good. The man I’m going to see will trade these for the real thing. He can provide to order.”

  “What? He prints some?” she asked incredulously.

  “No. He steals.” He watched her face in the mirror, and laughed softly at her expression. “From people who won’t miss them for a while. Happens all the time…”

  Pope sat forward, yawned, and took a sandwich from the dashboard.

  “I need to practice,” he said unwrapping it. He had not entered the passport discussion. He had complete faith in Quayle’s ability to manage the logistics of travel and accommodation. He had his own job and, to do it, he needed to exercise his skills every two days for fifteen minutes. Skeet shooting was good for the eye, a game of squash would do between times, but he now needed a range session. Fast reflex precision shooting needed gun time.

  “What do you need?”

  As Pope told him, Holly sat back and watched the rain on the windows, suddenly remembering the dead man on the veranda, the shattered lolling jaw, and felt the sickening fear again.

  At seven that evening, with a man paid to drive the car to Verona on his way, Quayle paid off the water taxi man and they checked into the Gabrielli Hotel, entering through the back garden’s canal gate.

  Quayle waited, letting Holly check in with Pope as her father in the next room. He gave her half an hour and then walked round to the front through the deserted laundry area, asking if his wife and father-in-law had arrived yet.

  He was shown up to the room by a portly middle-aged man and, twenty minutes later, lay in a hot bath. Stage one was over. They were clear of Greece. A few days lying low, some new papers, and they would move on, throwing the scent of the fox to the wind.

  *

  It was a girl on chartered yacht who saw the body. It was floating
face down in the water, bobbing on the small waves. At first she thought it was rubbish bag that someone had thrown over the side – and, being conservation minded, she was about to suggest that they pulled it aboard. Then the skipper saw it. The boat was a sixty footer and, under Greek law, required a local man in command. He had been making a living at sea for fifteen years and had seen bodies before and recognised it immediately. Dropping the main, he started the engine and swung the boat back round; then, in front of his silent charter party, he hooked a rope around one leg and, using the mizzen boom and a winch, hoisted the body onto the afterdeck. He had just come up from below with a blanket to cover it when one of the young men saw the second body tangled in seaweed floating nearby. The skipper had never seen a gunshot wound, but it was obviously not the fishes feeding that had left a wound like that – and accidental drownings don’t have ropes around their feet – so they headed back into Serifos and the authorities.

  *

  Sir Martin Callows stood granite-like in the bay window of his office, his leonine head hanging down and brooding as Burmeister ran through his report.

  “Get him, John. He knows something now. He was close enough to Morton and now the daughter.”

  “Knows something? He could be everything. He knows our systems. He’s linked to the daughter. Black had her name circled. Now the team hasn’t reported in, and they were going to his house…”

  “Did you know that?” Callows asked.

  Burmeister had been waiting for it. “No Sir, I didn’t.”

  “Slack, John. Bloody slack. I don’t pay you what I do for sloppy work. Understand!?”

  “Yes.”

  The telephone rang, its muted buzz dying as Callows’ secretary answered it. She popped her head round the door and smiled. “It’s for Mr Burmeister. Urgent.”

  Callows nodded and Burmeister snatched the grey phone up. Thirty seconds alter, he replaced it and looked at Callows.

  “Red one confirmed,” he said. “Two in the sea of Serifos. Pulled out by a charter boat. Athens Station Chief has just done a positive ID. Third still missing. He sent a man up to Quayle’s place. Fresh paint job on the porch, bullet holes underneath. Hair and bone fragments in the garden by the wall.”

  “I want him!” Callows seethed. “Concoct some suitable story. Get everyone in on it. The French, the Italians, the Germans, Interpol, Five, everyone! He’s snapped. He’s gone rogue. We don’t need this one getting away on us. Understand?”

  “I do.”

  Callows had lifted his head, his eyes red and angry. “Take Oberon aside. Have a chat. Metro this one. Get a few freelancers onto it. Slip the leash and let them run…”

  Sixteen years before, there had been a Bader Meinhof man who had gone on a rampage, killing not only in the West Germany, but in France and Holland as well. In a six week period nineteen deaths were attributed to his actions. His name was Andre Weber and he was eventually shot to death by Surete officers on the Metro in Paris, who then melted into the crowd. No attempt was made to arrest him. He was simply executed by the first intelligence service to get to him. He had crossed the line and would never be allowed a trial. Since then, seven people had been executed in a joint inter-intelligence service action after one country’s service had flagged the need. Even the KGB had co-operated on one occasion, when an ex-French agent had had a nervous breakdown and begun killing red-haired women. He had skills the police couldn’t match. The intelligence community had a responsibility to clear up after itself. The technique required the man to be pushed underground by publicity and civil police. There he would need to use old contacts, old routes and known methods. There, in that other darker world, he could be trapped like a rat.

  Burmeister nodded.

  Quayle stood in the doorway, larger than life. In the room, the woman shrieked with delight and waddled to him, her mammoth arms encircling his waist like elephant trunks, lifting and hugging him all at once.

  “Put me down Florentina,” he said, still laughing.

  She dropped him and stood, solid as a building, her tiny hands on immense water tank hips.

  “So where have you been?” she bellowed. “Three years or more! Keep doing that and I will never marry you!” She wobbled with laughter before remembering her manners. “Coffee. I will make coffee. You will want Papa. He is coming, but until then sit and take coffee and talk with me.”

  She beckoned with one huge sweep of her arm and he followed her into the kitchen.

  “How is he?” Quayle asked.

  “Good enough for his age. His heart –” she made a very Italian waggling hand gesture, “– but the shop does well.”

  The shop was a small dusty gallery behind St Marks, where Eduardo Rocca sold minor modern masters, etchings, sculptures and the odd very good forgery. Venice had long been the home of many of Europe’s best forgers and, in the tradition set by his father, Eduardo would move two or three a month, mostly to American and British buyers. As forgeries went they were outstanding. Several had passed through the famous auction houses in recent years, gaining the valuable transfer records and receipts that were accepted as authentications by most.

  He had asked Quayle to paint for him on several occasions and, although Quayle had refused, he had valued and appraised several fine Russian pieces over the years, catching Eduardo out on three.

  When Eduardo finally arrived home, a bright smile creased his old lined face at the sight of Quayle. “So you are back,” he said in English. “Welcome, welcome!”

  “I am, Eduardo. Thank you.”

  “You have come to paint for me? Eh?”

  “I am but an amateur compared with the masters you have!” Quayle said gallantly.

  “Ha!” Eduardo said raising his hands to the ceiling. “Flattery no less! Florentina, bring a bottle of wine. A good one.” And, as the big girl waddled off to find one, Eduardo led Quayle onto the tiny balcony over the canal, bright with potted geraniums and painted sills. On the street below, a noisy restaurant served meals to tourists.

  Eduardo took Quayle’s hands, lifting them to the light.

  “Someone didn’t like what you were doing,” he said bitterly. “Can you still work?”

  Quayle nodded.

  “And you didn’t come here for idle gossip or sympathy,” he said softly.

  “I need to see the boatman,” Quayle said.

  Eduardo raised an eyebrow. The boatman was a forger but of a different kind. He supplied share transfer papers, passports, birth certificates, licences and the like. He was the best in Southern Europe and preferred to alter the original wherever possible. These days he was a hard man to find. He used cut-outs and rarely saw a client in person after a set of documents he provided landed a Mafia Cappo in a prison in New Jersey. He knew that the Americans had switched to computers that summer, but the Mafia had supplied the originals. He was not to know they were red hot. The end result had been a contract on his head and, being a natural coward, he went underground in the city of the canals, as far from the hot Mafia drylands of the south as possible.

  “That is always difficult, Titus.”

  “I know. But I need a job done. Must be him, he is still the best.”

  “Leave it with me.”

  “No,” said Quayle. “I don’t want you involved. This one is likely to get nasty. I’m at the Gabrielli. Room Seventeen. Have him contact me. I will meet him anywhere he likes.”

  Eduardo shook his head. “No good. He won’t see anyone but those he knows. You will have to use me. Tell me what you need so I can tell him.”

  Quayle thought about it for a second. He wanted to avoid using the old man at any cost, but he needed the papers badly. “Passports. Good ones. EEC. Two each for these photos.” He held out a small packet. “Then I want him to re-work these. They’ll only be good for one try each, but it will all help.”

  “I will try him tonight,” Eduardo said.

  “After that, you stay out of it,” Quayle replied. “Tell him to use a drop to get them bac
k to me.” He handed over another envelope. “This should cover the work.”

  “Come to the shop tomorrow.”

  For a moment, Quayle was silent. Then he dared to venture, “Another couple of favours Eduardo…”

  “Name them,” the old man said proudly. He had always liked Quayle.

  “Your nephew still in the gun club? I need to get a friend of mine on a range for half an hour. Some time quiet, if you know what I mean. I also need a couple of things…” He handed over a small list.

  Eduardo looked and raised an eyebrow. “Should be all right. He is the membership secretary. He owes me money and he owes me silence. He is sleeping with a sixteen year old girl in the church choir. His wife would be very unimpressed. The youth of today,” he sighed sadly. “I’ll line up something for tomorrow night.”

  “Thanks Eduardo. I appreciate your help.”

  “Poof! It is nothing. Come tomorrow, see a fine etching I have. You will love the workmanship. It’s a Durer!”

  “I’ll bet it is,” Quayle smiled, taking a glass from Florentina who had re-entered the room with a tray in her hands.

  The following morning, Quayle took Holly to meet Eduardo at the shop, the old man fussing around her like a delighted prospective father-in-law. Taking her by the hand, he stood before a large Renaissance period piece.

  “You like?”

  “It’s wonderful,” she said. “It must be hundreds of years old!”

  He leant forward conspiratorially. “Three months old, six hours in the oven and some liberal treatment of dust and oil through an airbrush gun. Presto!”

  Holly laughed delightedly, then stood back while Quayle and Pope made arrangements for the range session and talked other business. Quayle was pleased. The boatman had accepted the job. In three days, the papers would be ready – not bad, Quayle thought. But the old man wasn’t finished.

  “Titus, a word please,” Eduardo said softly.

  Quayle followed him back into the office where Eduardo lifted a newspaper from the desk.

  “Bottom left,” he said, handing it over.

  Quayle quickly scanned down the page and the headline leapt at him. The bodies had been found, a gruesome find for a charter party of tourists. The story said that a madman was on the loose, and a continent wide manhunt in progress.