Masters of War Read online

  Hakim stared into the middle distance.

  The man slowly closed the rucksack. ‘This is yours,’ he said. ‘But only if you do something for us.’

  Hakim blinked.

  ‘What?’ he asked. His voice was hoarse. ‘What?’

  The blond man looked straight ahead again. ‘Do you know how to use a handgun?’ he asked.

  Hakim shook his head.

  ‘It’s very easy. You’ll only need one shot. And then, all this’ – he patted the rucksack again – ‘is yours.’

  ‘I’m not a killer,’ Hakim whispered.

  ‘Yes you are, Hakim. That’s why you’re stuck in a stinking room with a starving family. But if you’re not interested . . .’ The man shrugged and stood up. ‘Come on,’ he said to his companion in English. ‘Let’s go.’

  For the first time since the café, Skinner let go of Hakim’s arm. He stood up and the two men walked away.

  ‘Wait,’ Hakim called after them. And when they didn’t stop, he said it louder. ‘Wait!’

  When they were fifteen metres away, the men turned. With a slow, lazy arrogance, they walked back to the bench.

  Hakim licked his dry lips. ‘Who?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s an old man. You don’t need to know his name. He goes for a walk every morning at seven a.m. It will be easy to get close to him, and easy to run away. And you already know how easy it is to hide.’

  The sweat on Hakim’s skin had grown warm again. ‘If it’s so easy,’ he asked, ‘why don’t you kill him?’

  ‘For the same reason I don’t clean my own toilet. I can afford to pay someone to do it for me.’

  ‘You have to give me the money first.’ Hakim’s voice cracked again as he spoke.

  ‘No, my friend. That’s not the way it works. You meet me tomorrow morning, you walk away 10,000 euros richer. If not . . .’ He spread out his hands in a show of regret.

  There was a silence. Hakim felt as if someone had switched off the volume. He couldn’t hear the cars in the nearby streets, or the birds in the trees, or the passenger jet overhead. All he could hear was the grinding of his teeth. And the beating of his heart. It was faster than usual.

  ‘Ten thousand?’ he asked. His voice sounded like it was separated from his body.

  The blond man nodded. ‘Cash,’ he said. ‘Untraceable.’

  Hakim inhaled. He clenched his fists to conceal their shaking.

  ‘OK,’ he heard himself saying. ‘OK. I’ll do it.’

  The following morning brought rain. A thin, persistent drizzle that failed to relieve the humidity. Hector’s expression was bleak as he walked in the half light of dawn along rue Berger towards the RV point. He had already recced the area to check there were no cameras on the street, no CCTV to link him to the Algerian. Just to be sure, the rucksack had a bright orange waterproof cover, which he’d remove when the time came to hand it over, so he couldn’t be linked to the bag either. But there were other things that could go wrong. If the rain continued, the target might break his regular habit and decide not to take his daily seven o’clock walk that morning, and that would royally fuck things up. It would mean staying longer in Paris, and Skinner was getting restless. They needed to get the job done and get out of there before he did something stupid.

  By 06.40 hrs, however, the drizzle had eased off. And as Hector approached the Café des Amis, its glass doors closed and red awning retracted, he saw Hakim leaning against a nearby tree. The young Algerian saw him and stood up straight.

  Hector nodded in greeting. His mobile phone buzzed in the pocket of his jeans, but he didn’t bother to look at the message. He knew what it was.

  Hakim nodded back.

  Foaming water gushed from an outlet by the kerb. Fifty metres down the road, a green cleaning truck with spinning brushes at the front trundled slowly towards them. Two street cleaners, also in green, swept debris from the pavement into the water channel. Otherwise, there was nobody else in rue Berger. This part of the seedy Châtelet district had not yet awoken.

  ‘Who knows you’re here?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  Hector observed the dark patches of sweat around Hakim’s armpits, spreading through his rough shirt and circled with salt.

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘I told her I had a job . . . there’s this guy in the market who sells mobile phones—’

  ‘When I give you the weapon,’ Hector interrupted, ‘it will be already cocked. That means all you’ll need to do is point and fire. It’s an automatic pistol, so you can keep firing until you’re certain he’s dead simply by squeezing the trigger. The important thing is to get close to him. If you’re not used to firearms, it’s easy to miss if you’re not at point-blank range. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yeah,’ replied the Algerian. Hector noticed how his eyes darted up and down the road, resting briefly on a narrow street twenty metres to the north-west. No doubt this was the way he intended to escape. Hakim returned his gaze to Hector’s rucksack. ‘You got the money there?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Hector made to hand the rucksack to Hakim, but at the last moment snatched it away again. ‘One small thing,’ he said, pulling his phone from his pocket. ‘You’re a clever guy. I can tell that. You’re not the type to do anything stupid. But just in case you were thinking of, ah, I don’t know, running away with the money before the job’s complete, or warning the target, or anything like that, perhaps you’d better look at this.’ He pulled his phone from his pocket, unlocked it and swiped to his recent message. There was no text. Just a picture. He tapped on it so it filled the screen.

  The two men examined the picture together. It showed a small bedsit. In one corner, crouched on the floor, was Hakim’s wife. Her face was gaunt with terror, and she was clutching the two babies, whose little faces were blurred, though it was clear they were screaming. In the foreground of the picture, also slightly blurred but clearly pointing at Fatima and her children, was the barrel of a gun.

  ‘They’re perfectly safe,’ Hector said quietly, ‘just so long as you keep your side of the bargain. Of course, if you don’t . . .’ He returned the phone to his pocket and gave the dumbstruck Hakim a bland smile. ‘If you don’t, Skinner can be unpleasant.’

  Hakim gave Hector a look of helpless hatred, which he ignored. He checked his watch. ‘Eight minutes,’ he said. ‘Is that your stomach rumbling? You should have eaten. It settles things down. At least, it always does for me.’

  Hector checked his watch again. 06.55 hrs. He noticed Hakim was sweating even more now.

  Then Hector looked up at a window on the third floor of the apartment building on the other side of the street, immediately opposite their position. Somebody inside opened the curtains. Bang on schedule. Hector looked up and down the street. The cleaning truck was twenty metres away. He could hear its engine turning over and the whirr and hiss of its brushes. The two street cleaners were alongside it. They were concentrating on their job, and not on the two men loitering outside the Café des Amis.

  Coming from the opposite end of rue Berger, an elegantly dressed woman walked briskly in their direction. She was about thirty metres away and talking on her mobile phone. Seconds later, as she passed, Hector caught the scent of her perfume. He felt himself frowning as the smell drifted away, to be replaced by Hakim’s stinking breath. ‘Any minute now,’ he murmured. He took the rucksack from his shoulder and removed the coloured waterproof covering. ‘This is yours.’

  Trembling, Hakim slung the rucksack awkwardly over his own shoulder. ‘It’s heavy,’ he said.

  ‘Lot of money, my friend. Lot of money.’ From inside his jacket Hector pulled out a Browning Hi-Power semi-automatic pistol. Hakim stared at it. Hidden by the tree from the gaze of the truck driver and the street cleaners, Hector cocked the weapon, before carefully handing it over. ‘Thirteen rounds,’ he said over the noise of the brushes. ‘You should only need one if you fire it close enough.’

  Hakim accepted the weapon like an am
ateur, holding it lightly in his fingertips. Hector had to move the Algerian’s arm out of the way so that the weapon was not pointing in his direction. He could feel the kid trembling.

  ‘Remember,’ he said. ‘Skinner’s with your family. Nobody wants them to get hurt.’

  Hakim swallowed hard and a trickle of sweat slid down his face.

  06.59 hrs. The door of the apartment block opened. For a tense few seconds, nobody appeared. And then, very slowly, an old man, clearly Middle Eastern, stepped out into the street, accompanied by a much younger woman. The man’s shoulders were stooped, and he walked with the aid of a stick. He had a short grey beard and his head was wrapped in a red and white keffiyeh. The young woman was also Middle Eastern, but she was dressed in Western clothes – jeans and a scarlet jumper – and was strikingly beautiful. She gently held the old man’s free arm and helped him as he tottered along.

  Distance between Hakim and the target: twenty-five metres.

  ‘That’s him,’ Hector said. ‘Do it now.’

  Hakim hesitated and Hector felt a moment of anxiety as the couple disappeared behind a parked Transit van. Surely they weren’t going to get into the vehicle and disappear? He took out his phone again and waved Skinner’s photograph in front of Hakim’s face. That was enough. As the old man and his companion reappeared from behind the Transit, at Hakim’s eleven o’clock, the Algerian moved nervously forwards, the rucksack firmly on his back, the Browning hanging by his side. He stepped into the stream of water gushing from the outlet, soaking his shoes. As he crossed the street he left wet footprints.

  Hakim approached the target. Hector walked along the pavement in the opposite direction, looking repeatedly over his shoulder. He could see the cleaning truck getting nearer. He was not concentrating specifically on the Algerian or the old man, but on the distance between the two. Twenty metres. Fifteen metres. Ten.

  Hector slipped his left hand into the pocket of his trousers and felt for its contents: a simple switch, fitted to a radio transmitter and a battery, the whole device no bigger than an ordinary house key. He continued to hurry along rue Berger, and to estimate the distance between Hakim and the target.

  Seven metres.

  Five.

  Three.

  Suddenly the elderly man stopped and looked at Hakim with alarm. With surprising vigour, he grabbed his young companion and manhandled her in between himself and Hakim.

  Hakim stopped too. He looked around wildly as he raised his gun. He held it inexpertly with two hands and Hector could tell, even from this distance, that his chances of nailing the guy with that kind of technique were close to zero.

  Not that it mattered, of course, because the Browning wasn’t loaded.

  There was just enough time, before the cleaning truck obscured Hector’s line of sight, for him to see Hakim pull the trigger. When nothing happened, the look of astonishment on the faces of both the would-be assassin and his target was almost comical. The truck edged closer. Hector could no longer see them. He braced himself and flicked the switch.

  The sound of the rucksack exploding was immense. Even Hector, who had been expecting it, felt an electric jolt through his body and winced at the pain in his eardrums. He heard glass shatter and the thunder of shrapnel and body parts hammering on the side of the truck. Even before the remaining shrapnel had settled, several car alarms burst into life. He could hear screaming too. Having packed the explosives into the rucksack himself, he knew it couldn’t be Hakim, the young woman or the old man. They were already dead. Probably just one of the street cleaners. Wrong place at the wrong time. Bad luck, son.

  He picked up his pace and, having reached the end of rue Berger, turned right before taking out his phone, dialling a number and holding the phone to his ear as he walked. It rang just twice before Skinner answered.

  ‘Done?’

  ‘Done,’ Hector confirmed. ‘Fucking muppet didn’t even try to check the money. We could have saved ourselves a few euros on a cheaper copying machine to do the notes and pocketed the difference.’ A pause. ‘Everything OK at your end, mucker? What the hell’s that banging noise?’

  A pause. Long enough to make Hector uneasy.

  ‘Nothing,’ Skinner said. ‘I’m leaving now.’ He hung up.

  Hector stopped and looked at the screen of his phone for a moment. Then he heard the sound of sirens. He removed the battery from the phone, ripped out the SIM card and bent it in two, then stuffed both down a drain. With the phone dealt with, he put his head down and headed to Châtelet–Les Halles Métro station. An hour from now he’d be on a train out of Paris, and on to the next job, wherever that might take him.

  Skinner shoved his phone into his pocket and looked around the room. What a fucking dump, he thought to himself. At least the brats were silent. He’d ripped a dirty dishcloth in two and shoved one half in each of their mouths. Shame he couldn’t say the same for their bitch of a mother. She was whimpering like a child despite the scouring pad he’d shoved in her mouth to shut her up. He looked at her. She was naked and tied face down to the table, her thighs and torso bound so tightly with the sturdy duct tape he had brought with him that the flesh around the indentations was already swollen. Skinner’s eyes passed over the area around her anus and genitals, bleeding from where he had violated her, and looked with contempt at her head, which she was rhythmically banging against the table as she wept.

  That fucking banging. It got on his nerves. ‘Shut up!’ he told her. He couldn’t speak French, but that was her problem, not his. ‘Shut . . . the fuck . . . up . . .’

  The whimpering became more desperate. The banging a little faster.

  Skinner spat. Then he grabbed his suppressed handgun from the drainer beside the sink and pressed the barrel against the woman’s cheek. She opened her eyes and, for a moment, the banging stopped.

  ‘Mes enfants . . .’ she whispered. ‘Elles sont trop petites . . .’

  The words meant nothing to Skinner. He muttered one of his own – ‘Bitch’ – before turning his head to one side and squeezing the trigger.

  The woman’s head thudded against the table for a final time.

  Skinner’s hand and weapon were covered with blood. He rinsed his fingers briefly under the tap, shook them dry, then walked over to the little cot where the two newly orphaned babies were lying, the pieces of dishcloth still stuffed in their mouths. He raised his gun and pressed the butt of the suppressor against the cheek of one of them. A rectangular smear of their mother’s blood transferred itself to the child’s skin. Both babies lay very still. It was as if they knew their lives were in the balance.

  They were hardly worth a bullet. He had another idea. There was enough duct tape left on the roll for him to bind the two of them together, like Siamese twins joined at the belly. They screamed as he did it, but this was the sort of place where the screams of children went unheard. He picked up the monstrously swaddled bundle and carried it over to the little bath. It was stained yellow, and encrusted with limescale around the plughole. He put the plug in, then laid the wailing babies in the bath.

  He turned on the taps, leaving the babies to their watery death. He didn’t even glance at their mother’s corpse as he left the bedsit, closing the door silently behind him.

  TWO

  The MoD policeman at the entrance to RAF Credenhill approached the black car with a neutral expression on his face, neither welcoming nor threatening. He waited while the rear-right passenger window slid silently down, then accepted two identity cards from a hand with neatly trimmed nails and a gold signet ring. He examined the cards, then bent down to peer into the back of the car.

  ‘Mr Carrington?’ he asked.

  The man nearest him nodded. Steel-grey hair, black-rimmed glasses. His face matched his photo.

  ‘And Mr Buckingham?’ The policeman turned his attention to the man next to him. Much younger, thirty maybe. Absurdly handsome, with a pleasant, open expression, a thick head of black, slightly floppy hair and a healthy tan. Hugo Bu
ckingham nodded respectfully. The MoD policeman handed back the identity cards and waved the vehicle through the gates.

  Hugo would never have admitted it to anybody, but he’d been rather looking forward to today. SAS headquarters. Not everyone got to see inside this place. In the five years he’d been with the Foreign Office he’d had to acknowledge privately that, for the most part, intelligence work was dull. Oh, he’d had the opportunity to travel, no doubt about it. There was barely a British embassy in the Middle East he hadn’t set foot inside, and he’d had his share of contact with agents on the ground. In reality, however, he was little more than a glorified secretary, filing the correct bits of information in the correct place in the hope that the analysts back in London could use them to join up some dots. Whenever his old school friends – bankers, most of them, already planning to retire and spend a bit more time with their money – tried to get him drunk in the hope that he could be persuaded into some juicy indiscretion, Hugo Buckingham would always touch the side of his nose slyly and deliver his favourite line: ‘It’s government business, my friend. That’s all you need to know.’ A useful phrase. It sounded at once good-natured and jokey, made it sound as though he might know a great deal, and hid his ignorance of anything remotely resembling a state secret.

  But a visit to SAS headquarters? Now that was something to dine out on.

  The car slid to a halt outside the main Regiment building, which was disappointingly bland and utilitarian. The driver turned off the engine and remained seated, discreet and silent. ‘Shall we?’ Carrington said. These were the first two words the old fart had spoken to Buckingham for the entire journey from London.

  ‘Righto,’ Buckingham replied. He exited the car, then walked round the back to open the other rear door. Carrington climbed out without a word, removed a leather attaché case from the back seat, dusted the lapels of his suit and walked towards the building, where a simple brass plaque bore the inscription ‘22 SAS HQ’.