Payback (24 page)

‘I’ve no idea,’ Richter said, ‘but I’m going to find out. Look, there’s not a lot more I can do here now the bomb’s gone off. I’ll probably be
better employed finding out whatever else Holden has up his sleeve, so I think I’ll go back to Dubai.’

‘Not tonight you won’t,’ Evans said, ‘because the last flight’s already left, but we’ll get you a seat on the first available aircraft tomorrow
morning.’

Friday
Barcelona Airport, Spain

‘Barcelona Ground, November Two Six requesting taxi instructions.’

The Gulfstream G450 had just landed at Barcelona after the transatlantic flight for its single scheduled refuelling stop.

‘Two Six, Barcelona Ground. Take the first taxiway to the left and continue straight ahead. You’ll be parked at Terminal C for refuel.’

Three minutes later, Richard Watts applied the parking brake and shut down the engines. As the turbofans spooled down, his co-pilot, Frank Pertwee, selected the passenger-address system.

‘This is Barcelona, and we’ll be on the ground for about forty-five minutes while we refuel. You can take this opportunity to stretch your legs, but remember we’re parked at an
active terminal so watch out for vehicles and aircraft. Directly in front of us is Terminal C, where there are restrooms and a cafeteria, if you really want a change from the delicious coffee and
sandwiches you’ve enjoyed up to now. But make sure you’re back on board in forty minutes.’

The passenger door on the left-hand side of the aircraft opened and a set of integrated steps slid down smoothly. A few moments later Grant Hutchings walked down them, followed by Baxter, Franks
and Middleton.

‘I know that’s a real comfortable aircraft, but I’m not sorry to be on the ground again,’ Baxter muttered, taking a deep breath and then wishing he hadn’t as his
nostrils filled with the stench of burnt kerosene. Beyond the hardstanding, a Boeing 737 in the livery of a cut-price airline touched down on the runway, and moments later the air was filled with a
sudden roar as the pilot engaged reverse thrust to slow down the aircraft. All around them was the constant sound of engines and the movement of vehicles, because despite the time the airfield was
working at full pace.

‘OK,’ Hutchings raised his voice against the background noise. ‘Let’s go get ourselves something to eat.’

As the four men walked across the hardstanding, a bowser arrived to refuel their aircraft. This took about twenty minutes and, once it had been completed, the bowser driver went into the
Gulfstream to process the paperwork, emerging a few minutes later.

Once the bowser had moved away, two men in white overalls approached the G450 and stood looking at something beneath the fuselage. None of the ground engineers nearby noticed anything unusual
about them, and no one paid any attention when one of them climbed the steps to enter the aircraft.

Roy Sutter was wearing a set of white overalls, and a visual identification card showed his name as ‘Josep Matero’. Entering the cabin of the Gulfstream, he knocked on the cockpit
door. Inside, Watts was reading notes attached to a clipboard, while Pertwee checked the route for their onward journey to Dubai.

‘Yes?’ Watts turned round and looked up. ‘What is it?’

Sutter smiled slightly nervously and gestured back over his shoulder. ‘It is probably nothing,
señor
,’ he replied, in heavily accented English, ‘but there is
fluid leaking from underneath the aircraft. Perhaps you should take a look?’

Watts muttered something under his breath, and turned to his co-pilot. ‘Go check it out, will you, Frank? It’s probably just a spillage after the refuelling.’ On the
Gulfstream, the refuelling point is more or less in the centre of the underside of the fuselage.

Pertwee stood up and walked into the passenger compartment. Just before they reached the exit door, Sutter swung a lead-filled cosh hard, smashing it into the back of the co-pilot’s head.
Instantly knocked unconscious, he collapsed without a sound. Sutter grabbed him, lowering his limp body to the floor.

He glanced back towards the cockpit, making sure the pilot wasn’t coming out, then took a thin garrotte from his pocket. Looping it over the co-pilot’s head, he pulled it tight
around his neck. Then, after a couple of minutes, he released it and checked for a pulse.

Satisfied, Sutter retraced his steps to the cockpit door. ‘The other pilot,
señor
,’ he said, ‘he would like you to look. It may be a problem with the
hydraulics.’

Watts nodded wearily and stepped out of the cockpit. He stopped in his tracks the instant he saw Pertwee’s lifeless body in front of him, but by then it was already too late. The cosh
crashed into the back of his head, cracking his skull and starting internal bleeding. Watts toppled forward, already dying. Sutter completed the process with his garrotte, then stood back. Two
down, another four to go.

Sheraton Hotel, Manama, Bahrain

Carole-Anne Jackson lay comfortably beside Richter in his double bed. The lights were out, the curtains pulled open. Through the picture windows, the yellowish glow of the
lights of Manama provided enough illumination to distinguish objects in the darkened room.

‘Another drink?’ Richter asked. ‘The champagne’s all gone, but I think there’s still some white wine left.’

‘If there
is
another microscopic bottle, I might just be able to force it down.’

Richter climbed out of bed and padded across to the minibar.

‘Thanks.’ She took the glass. ‘You haven’t forgotten my offer to act as your guide in Dubai, I hope?’

‘Certainly not.’

Carole-Anne Jackson took a sip, then gazed across at Richter, who was now lying back and staring at the ceiling.

‘You seem a bit preoccupied, Paul. What is it?’

Richter turned to her and grinned. ‘Sorry. You’re right – one thing
has
been puzzling me. Something Caxton told me about this horse, Shaf. What happened at those stables
makes no sense.’

‘To be ruthlessly accurate,’ Jackson said, ‘we still have no idea
what
happened there. So far, nobody who worked or lived there has turned up, dead or alive. It’s
as if they all just vanished into thin air.’

‘People don’t vanish, Carole, and especially not leaving several million dollars’ worth of equine assets behind. Not unless they want to, and I can’t think of any reason
that makes sense. Somebody else made them disappear.’

‘You mean coercion – blackmail or something?’

Richter shook his head. ‘Nothing so mundane. Not with that many people. That sheikh . . .’

‘Qabandi,’ Jackson supplied.

‘Right, Sheikh Qabandi. He said there should be at least a dozen people permanently at the stables. There’s only one way you can get that many to vanish and have absolutely no trace
of them turning up. My gut feeling is that they’re still somewhere nearby, but dead and buried. And there’s another piece of evidence that everybody seems to have ignored.’

‘The trace of urine?’

‘Exactly,’ Richter agreed, ‘the urine. Human urine in a bathroom makes sense, but in the entrance hall of a really expensive property it doesn’t, except in one context,
of course.’

‘You mean someone was killed there?’

‘When somebody dies violently, they often lose control of their bladder.’

‘There wasn’t any blood found in the hall,’ Jackson pointed out.

‘That just means the victim was killed using a method that didn’t involve a puncture wound. He wasn’t shot or stabbed, but he could have been strangled or suffocated. The
killers obviously wanted to avoid leaving traces of their crime. Bloodstains immediately suggest foul play, but urine is more of a puzzle.’

‘I suppose that makes sense. So what are you going to do about it?’

‘Not a lot. I’ve no authority here, and my only task is to investigate Holden in Dubai. Getting involved in the disappearance of a dozen people in Saudi lies well outside my remit.
But I think it would be worth your while suggesting that the Saudi police take a close look at the entire area surrounding the stables, using sniffer dogs if they’ve got them. I think
they’ll find the bodies if they look hard enough.’

Barcelona Airport, Spain

The cabin door was still open and Sutter peered out, looking for the four CIA officers. There was no sign of them, but he knew there was no time to waste.

He seized Watts’ body around the chest and pulled the dead man to the rear of the passenger cabin, then opened the toilet door, dragged him inside and sat him on the bowl. Two minutes
later, he jammed Pertwee on top of Watts and forced the door closed.

He walked back to the cockpit, quickly peeling off his white overall. Underneath, he was wearing the universal uniform of corporate pilots – a short-sleeved white shirt, very dark blue
slacks and black shoes. He glanced out of the door. The other ‘ground engineer’ – Jeffrey Haig – looked up from his position near the foot of the steps, and Sutter
nodded.

Moments later, Haig joined him, carrying a toolbox. It contained two special items they’d purchased that afternoon in Barcelona: a forged-currency detector and a set of assay tools
designed to check the purity of precious metals.

‘You got the capsules?’ Sutter asked. Haig nodded silently and pulled a small plastic bottle from his pocket. ‘OK. I’ll drop the rubber jungle. Be quick.’

Haig walked back into the passenger compartment, where overhead panels had now opened and from which oxygen masks were dangling. He pulled on a bio-filter mask, opened the plastic bottle and,
with a pair of tweezers, inserted one capsule into the oxygen tube feeding each mask. The capsules were a simple but clever design, with a central hole to allow free flow of oxygen, but containing
a powerful and virtually odourless narcotic.

On his way back to the cockpit, Haig glanced out of the door and saw the four Americans leaving the terminal building. He re-entered the cockpit and dropped into the co-pilot’s seat.
‘They’re all on their way back now,’ he announced.

Sutter pulled on the blue jacket Watts had hung up in the crew wardrobe – it wasn’t a bad fit. He then stood at the cockpit door, his back towards the passenger cabin, as the CIA men
resumed their seats. Then he walked across, scratching an imaginary itch on his forehead to partially shield his face, and closed the cabin door. But none of the passengers took the slightest
notice of him.

Locking the cockpit door behind him, Sutter sat down in the captain’s seat. Haig was still working his way through the last couple of items on the checklist.

‘Strictly speaking,’ he remarked, ‘we should be doing these checks together.’

‘I trust you.’ Sutter grinned at him. ‘Finished?’ Haig nodded. ‘Good. Switch on the “seat belt” sign and let’s get going. But make sure you keep
the toilet door locked. We don’t want one of our passengers going to take a leak and finding the john’s full of stiffs.’

The G450 taxied smoothly off the hardstanding towards the threshold of the active runway. Sutter held a commercial pilot’s licence and instrument rating in his real name and, though
he’d never flown this model before, he had no doubt that he would be able to handle it.

Ten minutes after engine start, Sutter eased back on the control column, listened to the rumble as the landing gear retracted, and turned the aircraft gently onto an easterly heading for the
transit across the Mediterranean and its next, and unscheduled, landing at Cairo.

Gulfstream G450, callsign November Two Six

Well under an hour later, the Gulfstream was already two hundred miles from Barcelona, cruising at 0.78 Mach, and holding level at forty-one thousand feet on upper air
route UM601 heading east. The aircraft had just passed beacon Balen, about midway between Barcelona and the island of Sardinia.

‘Time we sent our passengers to sleep,’ Sutter decided. ‘You ready?’

Haig nodded, and pulled his seat belt a little tighter. Sutter checked the navigation radar to ensure no other aircraft were in their vicinity, then disengaged the autopilot, throttled back, and
pushed the control column forward. The Gulfstream reacted immediately, pitching sharply nose-down, and the two men felt the increasing tension as their bodies pushed against their belts. Sutter
eased the column back gently, still keeping the G450 in a fairly steep dive, and adjusted the throttles.

‘Drop the rubber jungle,’ he ordered and, as Haig released the cabin’s oxygen masks, Sutter selected passenger address.

‘We’ve a slight problem. A possible cabin pressurization failure, and we’ve just started a rapid descent as a precaution. Place an oxygen mask over your face, pull the tube to
start the flow of gas, and then just breathe normally. There’s no immediate cause for alarm.’ Sutter left the P.A. enabled as he called across to Haig: ‘Make a Pan call and tell
them we’re in an emergency descent requesting fifteen thousand or lower.’ Then he deselected the switch. ‘That should make sure our passengers do what they’re
told.’

Haig was already talking to the en-route controlling authority.

The reply came swiftly. ‘November Two Six is cleared initial descent to Flight Level two zero zero against opposite direction traffic range twenty-eight level one eight zero. Call
approaching two four zero. Expect further descent clearance shortly. Squawk emergency.’

Haig keyed in 7700 on the SSR transponder. ‘Roger, Marseille. November Two Six is squawking emergency, in descent to two zero zero to call approaching two four zero.’

In the cabin, the four CIA officers adjusted the oxygen masks over their faces and pulled on the hoses, as they’d been instructed. Grant Hutchings was slower to react than the other three
and, just a few moments after he’d tugged on the hose, he pulled the mask off his face and sniffed suspiciously. He’d breathed pure oxygen before, and knew it was effectively odourless,
but the gas coming out of the mask had a definite smell. Very faint, but unmistakably there.

Hutchings took a deep breath and looked round with a puzzled expression. He was having no trouble at all in breathing but, if there
had
been a depressurization, that should be impossible
because the aircraft was still far too high. Normal breathing would not be possible until the Gulfstream had descended to about twelve thousand feet. And the cabin should be getting colder –
a lot colder – which it wasn’t. Then there was the strange odour. Something wasn’t right.