Black Ops: The 12th Spider Shepherd Thriller (37 page)

‘We just want a word with Yusuf,’ said Shepherd.

‘You look like cops,’ said the man.

‘Would cops be walking around with an ounce of Charlie?’ said Sharpe, taking the drugs out of his pocket. ‘Now stop being a twat and let us up.’

‘I need to pat you down,’ said the man.

‘You can suck my dick if you want, whatever makes you happy,’ said Sharpe.

Shepherd wasn’t sure if Sharpe was playing the part of a drug dealer or if he was just pissed off, but either way his outburst did the trick because the heavy patted them down sullenly and waved them upstairs. They had to squeeze past him and he glared at Sharpe as if he would happily have ripped his head off.

At the top of the stairs was an equally large heavy with an equally sullen expression on his face. He opened a door and nodded for them to go through. The office overlooked the street and there was the odour of stale onions that reminded him of the smell of Jamie Brewer’s surveillance van. There were two more heavies in the room standing either side of the door, their faces impassive and arms folded across their chests. One was bald, the other had thickly gelled hair; both had physiques that suggested they ate a lot of kebabs. Shepherd could see at a glance that they were big but they weren’t hard.

As they stepped into the office, one of the heavies closed the door behind them. There was a man sitting in a high-backed executive chair behind a desk that was strewn with papers and files. There was a hookah pipe by the side of his chair and an overflowing ashtray close to his right hand. He was smoking a cigarette and he blew smoke as he stared at them. He was in his forties, not as big as the heavies but he still filled the chair. He had a square chin and a thick moustache that gave him the look of a Middle Eastern dictator. His purple shirt was open to the navel to reveal thick curly chest hair and a heavy gold chain with what appeared to be a chunk of jade hanging from it.

‘Are you Yusuf?’ asked Sharpe. They’d decided that the Scotsman would do most of the talking and that Shepherd would play the strong, silent type.

‘Who wants to know?’ asked the man behind the desk. He stabbed out what was left of the cigarette as if he were grinding it into Sharpe’s eye.

‘My name’s Carrick,’ said Sharpe. ‘We’re down here from Glasgow.’ He jerked a thumb at Shepherd. ‘This is Mac.’

Shepherd nodded but didn’t say anything.

Sharpe gestured at two wooden chairs. ‘You okay if we sit down? Feels like I’m in front of the headmaster here.’

The man waved a hand at the chairs. Sharpe and Shepherd sat down. ‘You’re Yusuf, right? Mac here spoke to you on the phone?’

Yusuf nodded and lit another cigarette.

Sharpe reached into his jacket pocket and took out the ounce of cocaine they had bought. He slapped it on the desk. ‘That is good Charlie,’ he said. ‘Seventy, eighty per cent.’

‘I’m glad you appreciate the quality of my merchandise,’ said Yusuf. He blew smoke up at the yellowed ceiling.

‘I do,’ said Sharpe. ‘That’s why I’m here. We’d like more.’

The Turk grinned. ‘You have a heavy habit?’

Sharpe laughed. ‘Our regular supplier was in Manchester, but he got caught a few weeks back.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Why does his name matter?’

‘It matters to me.’

Sharpe shrugged carelessly. ‘Marty Potter. Anyway, Marty’s now out of commission and if I don’t find someone to replace him, I’m dead in the water in Glasgow. I’ll be out of business within the week.’

‘So what are you looking for?’ asked the Turk.

‘In the short term, two or three kilos, just to tide me over. Then if you can link me up with your supplier, probably ten kilos a month.’

The Turk’s eyebrows shot up. ‘That’s a lot. That’s a hell of a lot. Why can’t you buy in Scotland?’

‘Because I’d be buying from the competition and they’re trying to fuck me over. Look, I’ll pay you a finder’s fee, whatever you want, if you can hook me up. And the first three kilos, I’ll do through you.’

The Turk frowned. ‘Do through me? What do you mean?’

‘I’m going to be needing ten kilos a month and that’s out of your league, right? No offence.’

‘You came to me,’ said the Turk. ‘If you want cocaine, I will get you cocaine. If you want heroin I will get you heroin. I will get you whatever you want.’

‘Excellent,’ said Sharpe, rubbing his hands together. ‘So do you have three kilos now?’

The Turk frowned. ‘Do you have the money now?’

‘I can get it, no problem.’

‘You have it with you? In your car?’

‘No, but I can get it within hours.’

The Turk nodded. ‘So your money is in Glasgow?’

‘Less than four hours up the M6,’ said Sharpe. ‘It’s not a problem.’

The Turk. ‘So get your money here and we’ll talk.’

‘Do you have the gear?’

‘I will get it for you. Once I have seen your money.’

Sharpe smiled. ‘Well, the way we normally work is that we see the gear first.’

The Turk opened his hands. ‘And the way I normally work is that I see the money first. Especially when the buyer has just walked in off the street.’

‘How about this,’ said Sharpe. ‘You make the introduction to your guy, I’ll let him know that you got him the business. Maybe throw some commission your way.’

‘Commission?’

‘How much a kilo? For the good stuff.’

‘Thirty eight.’

‘That’s all good. So we’d agree to pay forty thousand a kilo and you take two off every kilo we buy. That’s twenty grand a month your way just for linking us up.’

The Turk looked at Shepherd. ‘So are you the muscle or the boss?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘In my experience if two guys come to a meeting and one of them does all the talking, the other one is either in charge, or he’s the minder.’

Shepherd smiled easily. ‘I’m the silent partner.’

‘Not Scottish?’

‘No. Not Scottish.’

The Turk nodded slowly and then looked back at Sharpe. ‘You bring me a hundred and twenty grand and I’ll get you three kilos. You bring me four hundred grand and I’ll get you ten kilos.’

‘That’s not what we said,’ growled Sharpe. ‘You said thirty-eight grand a kilo.’

Yusuf shrugged. ‘We can negotiate, for larger orders.’

‘Like I said, no offence, but I don’t see you coming up with ten kilos.’ Sharpe looked around the office. ‘It’s not like you’re living the high life here, is it?’

‘Appearances can be deceptive,’ said Yusuf. ‘Look at it this way. Your money is four hours away. The drugs are ninety minutes from here. The ball is in your court.’

‘How about this?’ said Sharpe. ‘We go with you to where the drugs are, we take a look and if the gear is good, we get the money to you.’

The Turk chuckled and opened the bottom drawer of his desk. He pulled out a Glock and waved it in the air, thankfully with his finger outside the trigger guard. ‘How about this?’ he said. ‘You go and get your money as a show of good faith. You give me your money and I’ll go and get the drugs.’

‘So you’ll be using our cash for the buy?’

‘What’s the problem with that?’

‘The problem is that if it’s our money then we should be handling the buy.’

The Turk pointed the gun at Sharpe and used it to punctuate his words. ‘You bring me the money and we’ll talk. Otherwise …’ He gestured at the door with the gun. ‘Go fuck yourself.’

‘How about this?’ said Sharpe, unfazed by the weapon being waved around. ‘We bring the money and you take us to see your supplier. We all shake hands and from then on you take two grand for every kilo we buy.’

‘As I said, my Scottish friend, bring the cash and we’ll talk.’

Sharpe opened his mouth to speak but realised there was nothing he could say that would move things on. He stood up and nodded. ‘We’ll be seeing you.’

‘I hope so,’ said the Turk, waving his gun at the door. ‘But I won’t be holding my breath.’

Sharpe and Shepherd left the office and went downstairs. Sharpe opened the door and stepped out on to the pavement. ‘See, I told you it wouldn’t be easy,’ he said. ‘Do you mind if I get a kebab?’

‘Are you serious?’

‘I’m hungry. At least this way we walk away with something.’

Shepherd shook his head and waved at the entrance to the kebab shop. ‘Knock yourself out.’

Sharpe grinned. ‘Do you want one?’

Shepherd laughed despite himself. ‘Yeah, go on.’

B
utton’s phone buzzed. It was an internal call. She picked up the receiver. It was Liz Calder.

‘I’ve had a good look at that passport,’ she said. ‘You said you didn’t want a memo.’

‘That’s right, Liz. Can you pop up now?’

‘Absolutely.’

In less than five minutes, the young officer was sitting opposite Button. This time her yellow legal pad was full of handwritten notes. She handed the photocopy back to Button.

‘Right, so yes, your suspicions were correct. This is not a regular passport. In fact it was only issued last week, despite the date.’ She shifted in her seat and looked uncomfortable. ‘You’re not going to like this unfortunately. Please don’t shoot the messenger.’

‘Cut to the chase, Liz, please.’

‘Long story short, it’s an MI6 legend.’

The news hit Button like a punch to the solar plexus and she gasped. It was the last thing she had expected to hear.

‘I know,’ said Calder. ‘It was the last thing I expected. And you were right. Pretty much everything connected to Peter Parkinson is flagged. That wasn’t a problem, it just took me some time to find back doors. Okay, so there is no birth certificate, no police file, no tax records. There is no paperwork to go with the passport, it was just issued. I have an old school friend who works at the Passport Office and she was able to run a check for me. She said it came from high up in the Home Office. It’s a genuine passport but can’t be renewed. There are credit cards all issued on the same day as the passport but appearing to have been in effect for several years. Ditto a driving licence. It even has a few penalty points for speeding, which is a nice touch. The driving licence uses the same photograph as the passport, which frankly is a tad lazy. That was my first clue that this was a legend. Then I looked at the credit and debit cards and realised they used a bank that Six often uses.’

‘So it’s circumstantial.’

Calder shifted uncomfortably in her seat. ‘I’m afraid not. I have another friend, from my university days, who’s over at Six. On the very QT I gave her the name and asked for a simple yes or no, would I be correct if I assumed it was one of theirs and she said yes. I know that perhaps I shouldn’t have done that but I wanted to know for sure.’

‘Not a problem, Liz.’

‘She won’t say anything, and really all she did was confirm something I already suspected.’

‘And other than that conversation, nothing else links back to you?’

‘The two conversations, Passport Office and Six, but they were just chats and there’s nothing official. All the database trawling was done through proxies, overseas mainly. There’s zero trail back to me.’ She looked down at her legal pad, opened it and pulled out several photocopied sheets. ‘I’ve got credit card details that show he bought a return ticket to Berlin, business class. And a booking at a Berlin hotel.’ She gave the sheets to Button.

Calder looked pained and Button realised there was still something troubling her. ‘Is there a problem, Liz?’

Calder pulled a face. ‘Well, I know you asked me to check out the passport, and the date of birth, and so on. The thing is, I thought I’d run the photograph through our facial recognition system.’

‘That was very enterprising of you.’

‘And I got a hit.’

‘Yes. I’m sure you did. Don’t worry, Liz, I think I know where this is going.’

‘So you know it’s Dan Shepherd, an MI5 officer? I mean, his file is above my security clearance so other than the fact that he works for us I have no information.’

Button nodded. ‘I did know, yes. And you did an excellent job, I must congratulate you on that. But now I’m going to have to ask you to forget it all. I’ll take it from here.’

‘Has something bad happened?’ asked Liz quickly. She grimaced and held up a hand. ‘I’m sorry, of course, I’ll wipe it from my memory. And other than my pad here, I have no notes.’ She ripped off the top half dozen pages from her pad and placed them on Button’s desk. ‘I’m sorry if I did something wrong by, you know …’

Button flashed the young officer an encouraging smile. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong, Liz. The opposite, in fact. I wouldn’t have given you the assignment if I hadn’t wanted it done thoroughly. You’ve done brilliantly. Just leave it with me now.’

Calder still looked uncomfortable but she nodded and stood up. She dropped her legal pad, apologised, bent down to pick it up, apologised again and hurried out of the office, closing the door behind her.

Button sat back in the chair and studied the photocopy of the passport. Peter Parkinson. MI6 legend. What the hell was Shepherd doing with an MI6-issued passport? And why had he flown to Berlin? To see Alex Harper? And who had killed the two Russians? Had Shepherd gone rogue? She dismissed the thought immediately. He wasn’t the type. Shepherd was the original straight shooter, a man with a moral code so firmly defined that at times it was a hindrance. Shepherd rarely broke the rules and on the few occasions he did, there was always a good reason for it. So what was he up to now? And who at MI6 was pulling his strings?

A
s usual, Harper took a long run through the streets surrounding the hotel early in the morning. Except where an op prevented it, the morning run had been an unbreakable habit of his since he’d joined the paras all those years before. He loved the stillness and the emptiness of the streets as dawn was breaking, and the coolness of the air. He ran the first five miles at a steady pace, his long strides eating up the ground, then ran the last mile flat out, finishing drenched in sweat and with his chest heaving. Back at the hotel, he showered, and was just drinking a cup of coffee when his mobile beeped to let him know he’d received a text message. It was from Button. Short and to the point, as always.
YOU HAVE MAIL
. He walked along the street to a Turkish-run newsagent and general store, with a couple of elderly computers in the back room, available for hire by the half-hour. When he checked the drafts folder, there was a message from Button:
I NEED YOU IN LONDON TODAY. REPEAT TODAY. LET ME KNOW YOUR LOCATION WHEN YOU GET HERE
.