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

  And there, in the centre of it all, was Quayle himself: an old photo, one taken after he had escaped from the prison. He had been thin and exhausted and he stared into the camera with sunken, hunted eyes.

  “They are onto you, my friend,” Eduardo said.

  Quayle just grunted. He read it again, looking for mention of Holly or of Pope – but there was nothing. Now there was no doubt in his mind: this was a set up, designed to flush him out.

  He looked up into the mirror on the back of the office door. In their efforts to create drama with the old photo, they had missed the opportunity to get a real likeness. No-one would put his face and the photo together.

  He kept the paper and they left immediately, Pope following a few feet behind Quayle and Holly. Once back at the hotel, Quayle showed Pope the paper. The man took it carefully, placing his glasses on his nose before lifting the page. He read it twice and then handed it back, neatly folding his spectacles and putting them back in their case before speaking.

  “They want you out running. You have something they want.”

  “Holly?”

  “Not just Miss Morton. Not any more. They would have emblazoned her picture over every paper in Europe, which they may do yet. No,” Pope said, “it’s something else. I think they link you with the problems in London.”

  Quayle looked him in the eye. “And what do you think, Mr Pope?”

  Pope looked back, his eyes hard and saurian. He put one hand up and stroked the thin pencil moustache. “It’s possible,” he answered finally.

  Quayle wasn’t bothered with the look. He leant forward, close to the gunman. “I could have killed you a dozen times already.”

  “I know that. It’s not your way. That is why I think it unlikely that you are part of London’s problem.”

  “We have a deal, Mr Pope,” Quayle said menacingly. “Be sure you remember that.”

  He was already at the door before Pope spoke again.

  “I could have killed you too, you know.”

  “You could have tried,” Quayle said. Then, surprisingly, he smiled – and for the first time in his life Pope felt a web of fear.

  That night, he sat with Holly and explained the new situation.

  “Do you think Pope is right?” she asked.

  “He could be. That’s a bit of the service I never saw.”

  “Why is he still with us? It can’t just be Adrian Black’s orders? God, that’s almost ‘mine is not to question why’ stuff!”

  “Actually, that’s the way it works at Milburn. But there is more. He’s not ready to pack it in yet. He’s one of the old school. A close protection specialist. A gunman. A killer, if you like.”

  She shuddered, remembering the bodies.

  “Don’t knock it,” he said. “He is a consummate professional, honourable in his own way. You’re an innocent and the old school don’t involve innocents. I would say that he isn’t ready to hang up his gun just yet and this job is staving off that day, but he also believes in what he’s doing.”

  “Is he good?” Holly asked.

  “In his day he was rated in the top three in Europe... Scares the shit out of me,” he added.

  The following evening, a messenger left a package at the desk just as they were about to order food up to the room. The porter walked it up to them, nodding solemnly to Holly as Quayle tipped him. In the thick envelope were the passports and the items he had asked for. As Quayle looked the documents over, he knew why the boatman was reputed to be the best forger in Europe. The documents were perfect, right down to actual entry stamps into places like Turkey, Morocco and Kenya.

  They had finished eating, had read for a while and were in bed when the phone rang. Only Eduardo had the number.

  “Oui.”

  From the mouthpiece came a moan of pain. It wasn’t a human sound, more that of an animal in agony, a deep primordial groan of pain and terror.

  “Eduardo!” Quayle shouted, his finger tearing at the sheets, swinging his legs over the bed.

  A voice buzzed down the line: Florentina, hysterical.

  “Titus, they are killing papa…”

  In the background, he heard Eduardo shout, “NO... don’t come Titus, don’t come!” Then the voice ceased and Quayle heard the blow in the background.

  Slamming the phone down, he jumped to his feet. Moments later, Pope came through the adjoining door, rolling on the floor with his gun up, looking for a target.

  Quayle was pulling trousers on. “Look after Holly. Get packed. The bill is paid. After that call, they know we are here. I’ll meet you at the vaporeta stop by St Marks.” He pulled a shirt over his head, and sat to pull shoes on.

  “What’s happened?” Holly asked.

  “They got at Eduardo and Florentina. They may still be there…”

  “It’s a trap,” Pope said instantly.

  “I know,” Quayle said. Then he repeated: “The vaporeta stop. One hour from now.”

  “Please don’t go, Titus.” Holly grabbed his arm, her eyes wide in fear. “Please.”

  “I have to. They’re friends and it’s my fault.” He stood and grabbed the small bag that Eduardo had sent.

  “Oh my God, please be careful,” Holly said. She was starting to cry.

  Quayle looked at Pope and nodded. There was nothing to say.

  Fifteen minutes later, he stood below the adjoining house and, taking a handhold, he began to climb the ornate baroque walls, moving balcony to balcony. Once on the roof he crossed silently and stood at the edge over the canal, looking down at the restaurant opposite. Eight feet below him was the tiny balcony. He listened for a second or two, but heard nothing. Then, taking the bag from his pocket, he slipped a garrote into his pocket and the fighting knife over his knuckles. The blade was five inches long, razor sharp – and around the handle, like the hand guard on an old sword, ran a heavy set of steel knuckles. The base was weighted with a heavy pommel that could crack bones on the back swing. Used by someone who knew what they were doing, the knife was a formidable weapon and could be used in almost absolute silence.

  He lowered himself head first, his hands in the guttering, and looked into the room. It was dark. Someone was still there.

  He could see a seated figure facing the door and he waited, looking for movement. It was a full minute before he saw the next movement. There it was: another figure standing in the darkness of the kitchen doorway. The trap.

  Pulling himself back up, he moved down the rooftop until he thought he was above the bathroom window, then lowered himself over headfirst, his legs counterbalancing on the rooftop. The window was ajar, and he eased it open fully, trying not to look at the dark water thirty feet below, and hoping none of the tourists looked up to admire the pretty flowers on the balcony or the night sky. As he lowered himself down, he felt the sill take his weight, then dropped through the window in absolute silence. Once inside her paused briefly to allow his night vision to adjust, then moved to the door and paused again to begin his breathing matra. He had fought once in Japan, fought a fifth dan aikido sensai who had beat the hell out of him because he had forgotten to get his breathing and his mental state right before the bout. The reality was that he would still have taken a beating because then he was only a second dan, light years away in experience and skill, but it would not have been so fast or so painful.

  He had never forgotten the lesson.

  Taking a towel from the rack over the bath – very carefully in case something squeaked – he moved back to the door. Directly opposite should be the man in the chair facing three quarters right towards the door. Immediately on his right should be the kitchen and the second man. He was standing, thought Quayle; he would be fastest.

  Closing his left hand over the door handle, he took a final breath, swung it back and threw the towel into the face of the man in the chair. In the same motion he swung his right hand back and up, the heavy pommel slamming into the face of the man waiting in the kitchen door. The blow hit him below the nose on the uppe
r lip, shattering the nose and driving a splinter of bone into his brain.

  Quayle dropped and rolled forward. As he came up, the other man scrabbled from the chair, trying to get the towel off his face and a gun up all at once. Quayle hit him in the groin with the steel knuckles, grabbing the gun hand and twisting until he felt the bone break. The man gasped in pain and fell to his knees, one hand to his groin, the other hanging uselessly at his stomach.

  Quayle hit him again, this time high in the neck and, as he fell unconscious, the big Englishman darted around the small flat, checking room by room for a third threat. In the small bedroom, he found Eduardo and Florentina. The girl held her father’s battered and bleeding head to her breast and cried in fear as the door burst open.

  “It’s OK. It’s OK. It’s me.”

  Florentina looked up, great silent tears rolling down her cheeks. “They have killed him. They have killed my father.”

  Quayle put his hand down and felt for a pulse in Eduardo’s neck. “No, he is alive. Call for the doctor.”

  Florentina rose like a released balloon, thanking God and the angels. After she was gone, Quayle lent forward. “Don’t die on me, Eduardo. You are a tough old bastard. Don’t give in…” In his arms he felt the man stir and give a small groan. “Just lie still. The ambulance is coming. Florentina is fine.”

  Gently laying the bleeding head back, he moved into the small living room.

  Florentina was talking in rapid emotional Italian into the telephone, but Quayle moved past her and lent over the unconscious man, jabbing two fingers into a pressure point.

  The man came to with a startled gasp and lay there with large frightened eyes looking up at Quayle.

  “Your friend is dead. I will ask you some questions. Answer them or you will die too. Comprende?”

  The man nodded. Quayle felt some disgust. This was a freelance thug. No honour, no pride, no courage except for beating up an old man.

  “How did you find them?”

  “The forger,” the man hissed through his pain..

  “The boatman?” Quayle asked.

  “Si.”

  “Where is he now?”

  The man didn’t answer.

  “Speak!”

  “Is morte…”

  “Dead? You killed him?”

  “No. Pierre.”

  “Who the fuck is Pierre?”

  The man nodded his head back into the kitchen where the body lay.

  “Who sent you?” Quayle asked, leaning forward.

  “Geneve. The man from Geneve.” And then, almost as if he knew he was a dead man for speaking too much already, he snatched at his pocket with his good hand. Quayle stopped it going any further. “They will kill me. They will kill me now.”

  “Which man from Geneva?”

  “Just a man. French. He had money.”

  “What else?”

  The man said nothing.

  “Speak, you fucker, or I WILL KILL YOU NOW!”

  “He was old and he had a ring... he had a square ring…”

  Quayle could hear the sound of the ambulance boat, somewhere out on the water. He stood and, picking up the man, carried him bodily into the bathroom, where he dropped him into the bath. He then bound and gagged him, walked through to the kitchen, dragged the body of the second man in and threw it on top of him. He spoke quickly with the still sobbing girl and got a phone number from her.

  He waited until the ambulance men had left, Florentina holding Eduardo’s hand, and then called the number. It was the supplier of most of Eduardo’s fakes, a man with connections. Quayle had met him before. He could organise to get rid of the body and decide what to do with the other. Now he had to move. If freelancers were in then Milburn might be close behind, and now Geneva was involved.

  Pope and Holly waited in the shadows of a newsstand. As Quayle walked up, skirting a pool of light from a restaurant, Pope called out softly, Holly mouthing a silent prayer of thanks.

  They stood in virtual silence until Quayle managed to flag a passing water taxi. He had hidden his relief well. If Pope was going to try and take Holly in, it would have been then, while he was busy with Eduardo.

  “Now we get a car,” he said.

  After they had left the water taxi behind, he broke into and hot-wired a late model Fiat, and a few minutes later they were back on the autostrada heading for Milan.

  Pope waited until Holly was dozing off in the back before he nonchalantly asked how it had gone.

  “Freelancers,” Quayle answered with distaste. “Eduardo will be OK.”

  “How did they get onto us?”

  Quayle noticed the ‘us’. He was feeling fuzzy, the after effect of the adrenaline surge now having left his blood stream. “They were watching the boatman. The forger. They killed him. That means we must assume they have the passport details.”

  “Doesn’t sound like London,” Pope replied with venom. “At least they do their own dirty work.”

  “Geneva.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Geneva. This instruction came from there.”

  They drove in silence for a short while before Pope spoke again.

  “Mr Quayle, have you ever heard of ‘Metro’?”

  Quayle looked across in the soft dashboard light. The occasional reflections in Pope’s glasses gave him a sinister appearance. He knew he wasn’t talking about trains.

  “Carry on.”

  “Chap called Weber in the early ‘60s. Bader Meinhof. Got out of hand and we chopped him. Not only the service, but the Germans, the Dutch, the Frogs got him on the Metro in Paris. It was agreed amongst the players. Weber had to go. Police couldn’t catch him. A trial would have meant hostages, the usual thing. Well, he was just the first. There were others. I worked on two of them. The players taking care of their own dirty laundry if you like. Even the Kilos helped on one. Every time freelancers have been involved. Adds pressure, makes whoever is the lucky bugger make a mistake.”

  “Jesus, that’s sick,” Quayle said.

  “Think about it, Mr Quayle. Could normal police take you? Not in a month of Sundays. They don’t have the skills. They’re not trained to deal with people like us.”

  “What’s your point?” asked Quayle, knowing the answer already.

  “I think you have a Metro order on you. Why else is Geneva involved?”

  “Then why weren’t these two working on Rome’s orders?”

  “A Metro is all stops pulled out. These two were probably on the Swiss payroll.”

  “But for what reason? They have dead men, but that’s their own bloody fault.”

  “You retired on... medical grounds. I think that would be sufficient to bring in the others.”

  Quayle didn’t reply to that but drove onward, thinking hard. Eventually he turned and looked at Pope. “If that’s so, then we’ll have to split up to cross the frontier. Every man and his dog will have our pictures…” He sat, trying to work out how many people were after them now, until at last he gave up. Assume everyone, he told himself.

  He was trying to piece together a plan when Pope gave a dry, mirthless chuckle.

  “What?” Quayle asked.

  “And you were going to go out of your way to throw the scent to the wind! Dear me, Mr Quayle. I think they smelt it in your pocket!”

  “It’s not that funny,” he said – but then, in spite of everything, he began to laugh too, the tension broken for the moment.

  They ditched the stolen car in a seedy neighbourhood of Milan.

  After a solid breakfast of cappuccino bread rolls and cold meat, they picked up a new hire car as soon as the Avis office opened, and were ready to cross the border into France by lunchtime. The crossing point would take them into the French town of Modan. It would be fast and busy but Quayle didn’t want to take chances.

  “Holly, you drive. Mr Pope will be your father.” He handed them passports. “You are called Scott. I will meet you in Modan. In the old town there’s a cafe called Noire Magic. Meet me the
re.”

  “How are you going to cross?” Holly asked.

  “Hitch a lift on one of the juggernauts…” And he pointed out of the windscreen at the huge lumbering giants that were passing.

  Watching her drive away, he rooted around on the side of the road until he found an old cardboard carton. Breaking it open, he scrawled the words: “My truck is in Modan”. After that, he barely had to hold it up. In the camaraderie of the road, a huge British registered Volvo lumbered to a juddering halt.

  The truck, returning empty, was waved through the border with minimal checks. In the cab, Quayle sat chatting with the customs men about AC Milan, his black beret pulled down like a cloth cap. An hour later he was dropped off in the square, the driver, an effusive Lancashire man, refusing to drop him on the fast bypass.

  Holly and Pope were already there, having passed through very quickly.

  “What were the checks like?” Quayle asked.

  “Good,” Pope said. “They are onto us.”

  That didn’t bother Quayle. He was feeling confident. It was the second time Pope had the opportunity to try and slip away and didn’t. They were also developing the kind of routine close protections needed. When Holly wanted to go to the toilet, she looked at Pope. He looked about for a few seconds, at the other people nearby; then he nodded and walked the twenty steps, Pope’s eyes on her the whole way.

  “Mr Pope,” Quayle said.

  “Mmm?” he murmured, not taking his eyes of the ladies toilet door.

  “Thanks.”

  Pope shrugged. He was just doing his job and keeping his word.

  *

  That same day, Jonno Smith arrived back from leave and, within minutes of being in the building at Milburn, he was being briefed by the man who had stood in for him.

  “So we got a red one on the Greek job. I tell ya, I don’t like getting Oberon out of bed.”

  It had been a fast brief and Jonno was still putting his thoughts in gear and looking up at the deployment board. By the look of it, things were going crazy. There were teams everywhere, and in the bottom left corner a red square. He felt a cold shiver up his spine.