The Protector: A gripping, action-packed spy thriller Page 15

  He eased forward as a big Audi moved up to overtake and, as it pulled back to the right, he saw the target Mercedes take a right turn up a side road. He swore loudly. This was not in his scenario. He wanted to follow them all the way to wherever they were going and do the job after dark. Now, with this turning, he would not have the cover of other vehicles – and it was still broad daylight. The consolation was that the road looked very quiet. They might be able to do it undisturbed. Turning fast without indicating, he didn’t slow his pace at all. He was committed now.

  The sharp bend came up quickly and, as he braked to go round the Corsican – possibly with some old Foreign Legion ambush experience flashing back into his memory, possibly with instincts honed over the years, possibly with a sixth sense, or possibly all three – he made an urgent animal moan and bashed on the front seat with his fist, reaching for a gun on the seat beside him. The car took the bend, the Dutchman trying for control on the narrow road, the mute banging on the seat, the two German youngsters trying to make out what he was saying – and there in front of them was a car stopped in the middle of the road.

  He hit the brakes hard, instinctively trying to correct the slide at the same second as he realised it was the target car. This was an ambush, and this was what the Corsican was trying to say.

  He snatched up his gun, a Heckler and Koch, and pulled the door handle. “Out!” he shouted – and died as a hard-nosed nine millimetre took him in the temple.

  His body was knocked across to the passenger seat by the second round, and the third took the German beside him high in the neck, a bright fountain of crimson blood arcing out onto the dashboard as he tried to scrabble away from the killing ground of the car.

  Pope stood, then and fired four rounds into the back seat through the still-closed back door, the mute screaming soundlessly as his fingers scrabbled for the lock. Then Pope dropped back behind the rock from which he had fired the first shots. Hidden there, he counted to sixty – time for the terrible shock to have worn off and for anyone still with fight left to try to get clear. All was silent except for the ticking of the hot engine.

  Carefully, he moved forward. Quayle was already back in the Mercedes, revving the engine and beginning to turn their car on the narrow road. Pope checked the tag car quickly, looked carefully at the Dutchman, pulled papers from his pocket – and, seeing no further threat, ran to the Mercedes as Quayle finished the last of his manoeuvres.

  With spinning wheels, they headed back for the lake. They never saw the man who managed to pull his motorbike off the road before they passed – or the fact that he remounted and began to follow at a safe distance.

  “It’s finished,” Pope said, looking over his shoulder into the back. “You can sit up now.”

  Holly was still on the floor, her hands over her ears. As she pulled herself up, she fought the waves of fear, her hands white and trembling, unable to believe that four people had died in the brief hail of gunfire. Pope sat in the front seat, still sucking his peppermint, refilling his magazine, his hands moving with economic, fluid gestures practised a thousand times.

  He completed the task wordlessly and then, dropping the gun into his lap, picked up the wad of documents he had scooped from the Dutchman’s pocket.

  “Thought I recognised him,” he said, thinking out loud.

  “Who?” Quayle asked, concentrating on the road.

  “The driver. Name’s Hoogstad. I saw him work once in Bremen. Freelancer. He was good.”

  “Not that good,” Quayle qualified.

  “He made a mistake,” Pope said, almost with respect. “It only takes one. He was first team.”

  “What? You all know each other?” Holly asked, appalled.

  “We know of each other,” Pope corrected.

  “And what? Have drinks, do you? Talk about your kills like fighter pilots?” She was angry now, the tension breaking out as aggression, tears in her eyes.

  Pope let her rant on for a minute or two, until she fell silent. Then he turned in his seat. “The last time I saw him, he was crawling up a sewer in his underpants, lying in the shit with the rats. He had a knife in his mouth and a handgun in the hand he wasn’t pulling with. He crawled into a room with four real nutters! Three Red Brigade and an Arab. They had the twelve year old daughter of a Greek banker, and they’d already cut one of her nipples off. He went in and did the job he was paid to do... Sometimes we have our place, and for the sensitive people like you it never makes the papers. Now, I didn’t like him, but I hand loaded his rounds that time. If he hadn’t been on this job, I may well have had him load for me one day. You don’t have to like what I do. That’s your privilege. Just be glad that you’re alive to do it.”

  He turned back to face the front and, as her anger cooled, she studied him with new respect, feeling a little foolish for her outburst.

  *

  The Director General of MI6 was routinely chauffeured in an expensive black Jaguar, but tonight he waited in a fully licensed and registered taxi, perfect in every detail – except that the driver had been hand-picked by Scotland Yard. He had previously driven senior naval officers and was given to nautical expressions, but now he sat in silence, staring straight ahead. In the back Sir Gordon Tansey-Williams sat back, his coat wrapped tightly around his knees.

  Morris, the driver, half turned his head. “That’s him, Sir Gordon,” he said.

  “You’re sure?” Sir Gordon lifted his head to stare out into the dark.

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Ask him to join us, will you, Mr Morris?”

  Stepping from the car, he pulled his jacket closer and ran across the wet street to intercept the man.

  Knowing something of the background to tonight’s meeting, he decided it was prudent to approach from the front and slowly.

  “Jonno Smith?”

  The man had a curious gait, his back twisted so that one shoulder rode higher than the other. He peered at Morris from under a tangle of wet curly hair. “Who wants to know?”

  “I’m from Century. My governor would like a word.” Morris nodded across the street.

  “Then phone me at the office,” Smith answered.

  Morris stepped forward, his hands raised in a friendly manner. “Look…”

  “Take another step and I’ll break your fucking arms,” Smith snarled.

  Morris stopped dead. He knew the crippled man was quite capable of carrying out his threat.

  “They said you were an aggressive little prick,” he laughed nervously. “Look, just cross the street. Look into the cab. If you don’t recognise the man inside then keep walking and he’ll phone you tomorrow. On your direct line – which is the blue phone on the corner of your desk below the pin-up. The red head with the big tits.”

  Smith studied him for a minute. The information was correct. “You stay here,” he said.

  “That’s never going to happen, son. He’s my responsibility.”

  Smith nodded slowly. Any other answer would have been suspect. All official drivers doubled as routine bodyguards for the senior people they chauffeured.

  As he got closer, the door opened and the interior light flashed on. Smith recognised the occupant immediately and, shaking the rain from his tired old coat, he climbed into the back.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  Sir Gordon made conciliatory noises as Morris nosed the cab into the evening traffic. Then he came directly to the point. “A little birdie tells me that you think that you’ve been ‘got at’. I’d like to hear about that...” He looked at Smith through eyes that gazed lovingly at his grandchildren at weekends and terrified Cabinet members during the week. “All about that if you will.”

  Two hours later, the taxi stopped up the street from Smith’s flat and, dropping him off, headed immediately to Upton Manor where it stopped outside a small terraced house with a pocket handkerchief garden. Sir Gordon knocked at the door and, as he did so, a dark closed van that had been outside most of the evening pulled away. He waited a few seconds a
nd the door was opened by a short chubby black girl in a dressing gown.

  “Good evening, Miss Bowie. We haven’t met but my name is Tansey-Williams. I believe you are alone. May I come in?”

  She looked at him for a second.

  “Hang on. The Tansey-Williams?” she asked, hand on substantial hip.

  He nodded and she swung the door open, her bright eyes quizzical. Soon, she had made him a cup of tea and, assuming he hadn’t eaten, quickly made him a bacon sandwich as well. Finally, she sat at his feet in front of a small gas heater and listened to what he had to say.

  *

  Quayle pulled into the parking building just as it was opening for business, the Munich streets beginning to get crowded. They had driven most of the night using back roads, stopping frequently and doubling back to check on followers. They had changed vehicles twice in that time, stealing a delivery van in one small Austrian town and deserting it miles away, before taking the train on to Innsbruck where they hired a VW Kombi. From there they crossed into Germany, dropping the Kombi off near Dachau, and hiring a new Audi from one of the proliferation of small agencies nearer the city.

  Quayle stopped the engine and sat, grainy eyed and tired, easing the ache in his shoulder. It still ached when it was damp and raining. He was confidant they had not been followed. He had seen the figure on the motorbike, but not since the outskirts of Sion; that was back in Switzerland and felt like a century ago.

  “We leave the car here and walk. There’s a small hotel round the corner. Der Leibling. It sells rooms by the hour. No questions. It will do us for the moment.”

  Holly didn’t care. All she wanted was a bath and then a bed.

  They checked in, Quayle playing the hick country boy in perfect coarse southern German while Pope and Holly waited in the lounge. He paid extra for clean sheets, smiling like a fool as if it were normal and then, carrying them over his arm, he trudged up the stairs after his new bride and her father who went everywhere with her.

  Behind them, the clerk sniggered to himself, pocketing the money. That afternoon, as they slept, he handed over the shift to his replacement and went to drink Schnapps and play cards with his friends and he related the story of the stupid ploughboy.

  One of his friends was a sometime pimp, sometime thief and full-time informer. He had been asked by his owner to look out for three strangers: two men, one older than the other, and a girl. The owner wasn’t Federal Police or even City of Munich Police. He was something to do with the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the BND, Germany’s Secret Service, and he paid well in street currency for information. Cocaine could be very profitable indeed. He smiled and drank, played cards, and bought his rounds, feeling up the whores like a rich man. Only then did he convince his friend, the hotel clerk, to point out the ploughboy, promising him a cash reward. Together they walked back to the hotel and sat in a bar opposite until eventually they were rewarded. Quayle walked across the street to a Turkish take-away and, twenty minutes later, walked back into the hotel carrying his food.

  Later that night, the informer phoned his contact. The man was away, he was told, but would be back the next morning. And so, driving his dilapidated old car round to the man’s apartment, he slept in the back seat, waking whenever he heard a car arrive to see who climbed out.

  Just before five, by which time his back was truly aching, he saw his contact step out of a taxi and ran to join him, hoping that the three hadn’t left the Die Leibling yet. This information, he thought, had to be worth ten grams at least.

  After the security service man had listened to his gabbled story, he took the lift up to his apartment and returned immediately with an envelope of photos. These he laid out beside a vase of wilting flowers on the doorman’s desk and asked the informer to point out the man he had seen. He’d shown them seven times that day to informers all over Southern Germany and was surprised when the man went unhesitatingly to Quayle’s picture.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Ja. That was him. What’s it worth? Fifteen, eh?”

  “If it is him, and if they are all there, then maybe five,” the BND man said with some distaste.

  “Five! Nien!”

  They began to haggle and, finally settling on eight grams of the drug, the BND man got onto the phone, trying to rustle up some help. Fifteen minutes later, a three man team picked him up on the street and, as they drove, they loaded guns on the back seat. There was no talk. The English bodyguard who had disappeared was now confirmed as being with them. He was rated as number three in Europe and, two days ago, he had killed the number two like he had been an amateur. There was no doubt about it: they were scared of the English Mr Pope.

  Quayle pulled his sweater over his shirt, combed his hair quickly and picked up his jacket. Holly was in the small bathroom still brushing her teeth, and he looked across at Pope who stood ready by the door.

  “I’ll get the car, bring it round the back in the alley. I’ll pick up some rolls and cheese too. Be about ten minutes.”

  Pope just nodded. He didn’t ordinarily eat in the mornings. All he wanted was a cup of tea and that was always a problem in Europe. They only drank tea when they were ill. After last night he felt good, well rested, even in spite of the arguing whores and drunken singing that sporadically shattered the peacefulness through which he’d slept.

  Locking the rickety door behind Quayle, he waited patiently for Holly to finish. He knew her routines now. After the toothbrush, she did her hair, long sweeping strokes of the brush that reminded him of his boyhood in London, watching his mother sitting at her dresser. While he waited, he crossed to the window and, careful not to reveal himself, looked out upon the Munich street. A van making early deliveries was unloading sacks of potatoes and a young boy was stacking beer barrels outside a bar. Men in working clothes walked the pavements in twos and threes towards a small factory somewhere nearby and a lone taxi prowled for a fare. He had wanted to be away by now – but the garage where they had left the car didn’t open until 5.45.

  Holly stepped from the bathroom, clutching a toilet bag. “Sorry,” she said cheerfully. “Ready at last! I’ll just bung this in here…” She bent over her hold all and, unzipping it, pushed the toilet bag down inside.

  Pope smiled at her and looked at his watch. His room was across the hall, overlooking the alley at the back.

  “I’ll see if he’s there,” he said, his tone telling her that, if he wasn’t, they were staying put.

  Unlocking the door, he crossed the hall, went through the open door of his own room and looked down into the alley. There, turning in at the other end, was Quayle.

  He turned back in time to see Holly stepping, bag in hand, into the hall. At the same split second he heard the heavy footsteps on the landing – and he knew.

  He took the distance between them in two strides, the adrenaline rising, pulling his gun clear of its holster. Holly felt his shoulder hit her. In her peripheral vision she saw the gun rising, his body turning, the beginnings of a shouted warning, his broad back obscuring her vision as the first deafening shots blasted down the corridor. She slid down the end wall, Pope’s bulk a barrier between her and whoever was at the other end, as he began to shoot back.

  There were four of them, two armed with Heckler and Koch automatic assault weapons. They were on the landing and moving fast, and a third man behind them had already fired his shotgun.

  Pope shot the man on the right first. Two bullets in the face and he swung the gun left for the second man, squeezing his trigger.

  The bullets slammed into Pope’s chest in an almost perfect grouping, punching him back against the wall. Holly fell beneath him as he fired again, the man stumbling and falling, the stubby barrelled gun tight in his fingers. The shotgun roared again and Pope felt his legs go like a sledge hammer had taken him – but, firing again, he watched the man fall. He knew he had been hit, but somehow he staggered to his knees, one hand on the wall for support, his breath coarse and foamy, blood running from his mouth, his
hard grey eyes looking for the fourth assailant. They always had four, the Krauts, the bastards…

  There was movement on the landing below. The figure snatched a look, but he couldn’t react quickly enough; in the next instant, the landing was splattered in blood and a twitching corpse plunged to the ground.

  The girl was screaming beneath his shattered legs. He fired twice, the gun kicking back in his weakening grip and the dead man’s face fell away in pieces. Then, as he fell back again, he heard the pounding on the stairs – and Quayle’s voice, through the misty cold pain, screaming her name.

  “She’s OK,” he tried to say. “Quayle, she’s OK…”

  “Oh Jesus!” And suddenly Quayle was pulling her out from under him and holding his head in his hands.

  “They’re all down,” he said, “all four of them. Quayle, she’s OK.”

  The blood tasted salty and metallic on his tongue.

  “Hang on,” Quayle was saying. “I’ll get you to a doctor…”

  Pope raised his head and looked down his body. The blood was everywhere now. He felt the warmth between his legs and he knew he was evacuating his bowels. The shotgun. His chest hurt. They had Teflon rounds. Right through his armour. Jesus it hurt. He didn’t want to shit himself, not in front of a woman.

  “No Titus, I’m done for. Femoral artery…” He looked across at Holly who sat huddled and in shock against the wall, her face spotted in his blood “Sorry about the mess,” he said. God it’s cold, he thought. So this is what it’s like to die.

  “Hold on, Jerry. Hold on!” Quayle pleaded.

  Pope looked up at Quayle and smiled weakly. He was shivering now, his body going into deep shock. “No-one ever called me that before. Tell Mr Black... that I wasn’t ready... for the trains. Go now... Take my gun! Even you will need it...” He tried to smile, but it was too late; he’d already lapsed into unconsciousness.

  Quayle stuffed his handkerchief into the leg wound and, pulling Pope’s belt from his waist, he bound it quickly and expertly.