To Kill Or Be Killed (41 page)

“Perhaps a
chance to confront them if you catch them, make them realise, feel
that pain, but you won’t get the chance. When this job is done you
can come and see me and we’ll confront the anger you have at those
responsible. It’s a noble sentiment, idealistic, but dangerous to
become motivated by thoughts like that. Check your feelings when
you continue and finish this chase.”

“Thank you. Is
that it?”

“No I’d like
you to describe every event in the last few days where you feel you
have not had control, how you dealt with it and how you felt
afterwards.”

Half an hour
later David left the room. He felt better, cleaner and less tired
in spirit. He went and got a cup of tea and then went to his
office. There had been no sighting of Stanton at the hotels or the
Priory Arms.

Else sat in
Jack Fulton’s office.

“Nothing to be
overly worried about, he’s coped well, but the stress has brought a
certain protective anger to the surface. His father was in the army
and as the only child at home, he got to be man of the house. He’s
been well loved. His mother died some years back and he’s grieved
well, but … well he feels the need to see justice done. He has a
problem, not with the assassins, that’s a black and white issue,
but he’s got good solid working class anger against the uncaring
attitude of those higher up that chain.”

“That’s not so
bad. Idealism is good if you’re going to be heroic.”

“If anger
against injustice is what drives that idealism it can turn to zeal
and zeal can lead to ill considered actions.”

“Should I send
him home?”

“No you brought
him her, best use him, he’s a good man, best for this job by what I
can see, just watch him when Stanton's in the bag or dead. He may
want to crusade against the evil doers behind it.”

“Okay thanks
Else.”

Else left and
Fulton sat back. He felt the same way though. He’d lost a good
friend, Cobb was dead, but he didn’t feel better. He felt in his
bones that Sternway was behind it and he felt anger and zeal at the
thought of getting justice for Wally’s death, especially if it
meant Sternway’s downfall. He applied Else’s warning to his own
situation.

CHAPTER
97

Lord North Street
London

3-15 p.m.

April 19th

It was straight
forward really and Stanton knew it. Hood up and woolly hat on, but
coat open, he held the silenced nine millimetre Browning pistol
under his coat, arms held in front of him, as if waiting in a
queue. He knew it was the right house and he didn’t need the white
satellite dish to tell him that this time. He rang the bell.

There was a
tense five minute wait as Bill Hutchings came to the door of what
used to be the original DIC centre. Back in nineteen forty it had
simply been a central office, packed with radio equipment and cine
film viewing room. Now it was a stipend residence for a DIC
operative. The radio listening and gathering centre was gone and
the house didn’t have the high tech equipment in the loft.

Bill Hutchings
was in his sixties, slow on his arthritic feet; a bald portly man
with a gentle nature. He had his DIC technical equipment in what
would have been the back ground floor room as climbing to the loft
was beyond him in his advancing years.

When Bill
opened the door he was just what Stanton was expecting. Stanton
pushed him back into the hall, shut the door behind him, put the
case down and pulled out the pistol.

“Hands on your
head Bill.”

Bill looked
back at him. He knew the face he’d been keeping up with all the
alerts and doing the CCTV scans for his area. Now faced unarmed
with the killer he was unnervingly brave.

“You’ll have to
shoot me you scumbag.”

Stanton did, he
shot him through the calf. Bill crumpled to the floor in agony.
Stanton grabbed him and dragged him into the lounge and threw him
into an armchair and pointed the weapon at his face, within an
inch. Bill looked back with now steady eyes.

“I’m telling
you nothing. You’ll have to kill me, which no doubt you will, but
you don’t scare me.”

Stanton put the
gun on a nearby table, Bill tried to rise, but his leg gave way.
Stanton grabbed his arm, pulled him up and punched him across the
jaw. Bill slumped into the chair unconscious. Stanton needed him
alive in case there was information he needed. He took Bill’s tie
off and used it as a tourniquet on his leg, took a curtain cord and
tied Bill up.

He went to the
kitchen got a tea towel and wrapped it around Bill’s wound. He
looked down at the old man. He thought him brave and he made sure
of the knots, a man like that would crawl out of the house and get
help. They didn’t make them like that any more.

His first call
was the upstairs of the house, there was no-one else there and the
loft was empty. He found the equipment in the back room. The
computer was on, but was pass word protected. He’d suspected as
much. After McKie he knew they’d tighten security. He didn’t need
the computer anyway, but would have liked to have got the updates,
see what was going on. He thought of waking Bill and getting the
answer out of him, but he felt sure Bill would die first. He found
Bill’s DIC pass in the drawer of the desk. He examined it. He
switched the computer off, logged on to the guest profile. He found
a lot of Paint pictures with the name Stacey on them, a grand child
no doubt, by the look of the badly drawn princesses and horses with
odd legs. He found the scanner controls, a Lexmark, and set to
work, he checked the time. It was three forty five. He was sure
he’d be done in half an hour. Then he’d head for the target with
the perfect ‘access all areas’ security pass. He called a taxi for
four twenty.

CHAPTER
98

La Rueda Restaurant
London

3-15 p.m.

April 19th

The beautiful
glass building was full of light. From his seat in the large
restaurant room Sternway could see the tower of London. He looked
at his watch and as he did so he saw the rather elegant lady, in
her fifties, half size heels, square toed and expensive, Dior
original dress and beautifully glossy and pampered hair walk across
the room towards him. Sternway found it hard to equate this
obviously well heeled and attractive woman with her plump and
spineless politician husband.

Sternway rose
and pulled out her chair and settled her. He sat down opposite
her.

“This is
lovely.” She put her small bag on the table.

“Shall we
order?” Sternway said and handed her the menu. The waiter
arrived.

“I’ll have the
Spanish Noodles with mixed seafood and shellfish.” Sternway said in
a neat precise tone of voice and the waiter scribbled away.

“I’ll have the
Lobster, Clams and Saffron rice.” Mrs Robinson said and added
“Shall I choose the wine?”

Sternway
smiled. She was surely the driving force behind her husband’s
career.

“Please
do.”

“I think the
pink cava will do don’t you?”

“Yes.” It
wouldn’t have been his choice, but he went with the flow.

When the waiter
had gone Mrs Robinson opened her small bag and took a piece of
paper out. It was an A five sheet, folded.

She slid it
across the table to Sternway.

The sheet had
three questions. The first was ‘would Stanton be killed when the
job was done?’ The second was ‘what did Sternway want in return?’
The third was rather shocking and related to the target.

He took out an
expensive, glossy ball point pen, emphatically clicked it once and
wrote his answers; one word, a sentence and one word again. She
took the sheet and read it.

Across the room
a young man and a girl were eating Paella. The man had a medium
sized sports bag on the floor beside his chair. Sternway had looked
around the room when he arrived. He’d noticed the young couple,
obviously engrossed in each other, but hadn’t noticed the bag under
the table.

He had been too
busy appraising Mrs Robinson as she entered to notice the young man
move the bag out from under the table with his foot, reach into it
and pull out a pack of tissues, as Mrs Robinson entered. If he’d
been watching he’d have seen that the movement looked slightly too
long and too complex the simple retrieval of a pocket tissue
pack.

When Sternway
did look around the room again after he had seated Mrs Robinson and
himself and noticed that the girl had put her hand bag on the
table, she was doing her make up and looked in the bag a couple of
times.

After ten
minutes Sternway’s and Mrs Robinson’s food arrived. It was a mini
feast. Sternway wasn’t over indulgent with food, often left food on
the plate, but ate the very best of what was on the plate,
especially if it was good food and he liked La Rueda, for the food,
the service and the view of the Tower of London. It was one of four
or five of his favourite lunch spots. He avoided patterns as a spy,
but he also liked to go places where he knew the staff and layout.
His choice of favourite spot was random and he varied his lunch
time. DIC had been watching him for some time and knew enough about
him to put a team there.

As Sternway and
Mrs Robinson ate delicately and made small talk the gun microphone
in the bag fed their conversation, via the transmitter in the hand
bag, to a car parked across the road. In the car a DIC operative
recorded it on his laptop as a digital sound file. It was fairly
boring listening material.

The two DIC
members in the restaurant and the operative in the car didn’t know
who the woman meeting Sternway was.

It was close to
four when they finished their eating. The restaurant wasn’t busy,
but was waiting for the build up after five o clock. The young man
and the girl were lingering over dessert and on the verge of
ordering coffees that neither of them wanted.

Sternway called
for the bill.

“The answers
are clear, but what guarantee do I have that he won’t suffer the
fate of his predecessor?” Mrs Robinson spoke suddenly, yet quietly
and with confidence.

Sternway was
silent. He gave her a look that would have had a time served
assassin feeling queasy, but Mrs Robinson was made of sterner
stuff.

She had met her
husband at Oxford University. He had been slimmer then and both of
them were studying politics. They’d both had an interest in
politics, but for different reasons. He was man with a view for
creating social justice for the working classes and she saw it as a
route to an easy life. They had courted, married and she had worked
hard to see him make it up the ladder of success. She had
introduced him to Terry Bloom, the future prime minister, long
before the man was publicly noted. Robinson had served as a back
bencher under Bloom, but with her support he had made good
contacts. It was Mrs Robinson who had paid attention to the changes
in the wind and had pushed her husband towards Gary Braine before
any change had taken place there. She was monstrously brilliant at
manoeuvring her husband into the right circles, right places and
right jobs. Braine hadn’t given Robinson a place in the cabinet.
Melinda Robinson saw her chances slipping away and had engineered
the situation with the then home secretary, Robert Cole. She had
cajoled her husband into contacting Sternway, creating suspicion
around Robert Cole about his investigating MI6 foreign operative
work. The rest had been easily done, a scandal and the carefully
arranged hill walking ’accident’ carried out by Marco Spencer. Mrs
Robinson, a favourite of the PM, had arranged her loyal husband’s
promotion, in the aftermath, to Home Secretary. She wanted the view
from number Ten Downing Street. She needed more control of
Sternway.

“Question
three….” She paused whilst the waiter took the card and cash tip
away. “Question three are you sure that… it can’t be done… “

Sternway kept
looking at her, not answering. The waiter returned handed back the
card and walked away. Sternway rose, smoothed his clothes and very
suddenly grabbed Mrs Robinson’s hand bag.

“Forgive me.”
He opened it, took out a small digital recorder and pressed the off
switch. He leant in and whispered in her ear.

“You’re a
lovely lady Mrs Robinson and people like you do scare me a little,
but you tell Tarquin that it will happen in the next hour, as
arranged, and if he doesn’t show some backbone he’ll regret
it.“

With that he
put the recorder on the table and walked away. Mrs Robinson had
flushed at the threat, Sternway was a dangerous man. She put the
recorder back in her bag and left. The young man and the young
woman called for their bill and left.

By the time the
young couple of DIC watchers got to the car the digital recording
was back at Euston Tower via the internet as was the photograph of
Mrs Robinson, who’d then been identified.

The whisper was
unclear and had been sent to the technical department to ‘enhance
it’. Fulton was on tenterhooks. He knew if he could get a link he’d
have Sternway in the bag.

CHAPTER
99

St Thomas’ Hospital
London

4-15 p.m.

April 19th

The DIC team at
the hospital, where the taxi driver who’d got shot taking Mason
over Vauxhall Bridge, consisted of two people rotating shifts of
two hours. Jack was a good boss and knew that sitting in a hospital
all day waiting wasn’t interesting to the kind of people he
hired.

Sonita was one
of the Euston Tower permanent staff. She liked the job, watching
CCTV, listening to radio transmissions, checking e-mail submissions
and the occasional special jobs. She was twenty two and made
excellent money in a civil service job which offered a lot of
interesting work. She might get a home based DIC job later on, when
one became available, but the London jobs didn’t come up often and
that’s where she liked to live. The hospital staff had been told to
alert either her or her alternating watcher the moment that the
taxi driver, Don Chapman, woke up.