Honour Bound (22 page)

-37-

A
sheet of plain white paper lay on the blotter at the edge of the table, delivered
minutes before in a sealed envelope by a motorcycle courier. Neatly typed on
one side was the information Langdon had promised. Attached with a paper clip,
was a file photograph of the man he had ordered Gerry to kill the night before.

Holmes
read the brief contents again. The wording of the message offered no indication
as to the reason it was sent.

Peter,

The man you
require to sort out your troubles.

Sam Norton.

38 Marlborough
Court.

Weston Road. W12

He drives a
Silver Alfa Romeo
Spyder
reg. no. 7355SN

Yours,

RL

Holmes
briefly studied the photograph of Norton then dropped it on the blotter.

"You’re
going to regret the day you decided to piss in my pool."

He
picked up the phone and dialled an internal number.

"Get
me Greg Shepherd," he said when a voice answered, "tell him to bring
his team with him. I've got a job for them."

Twenty
minutes later just as he had finished sucking the flame from a match into a
cigar he answered a knock on his door.

"Come
in," He waved the match out and dropped it in the waste bin.

The
door opened and a man of average height and average build entered the room. In
fact, every visible feature was average. He had average looks and even average
length hair. He would be difficult to describe to someone who had never seen
him, a fact that had worked well for him in the past. Gregory Shepherd had one
attribute that was far above average, and that was his efficiency in disposing
of unwanted problems. He was a paid killer. That was all he did, for Holmes
now, probably for someone else later. He was in great demand, because he was
very good at his job.

"Come
in Greg," Holmes said, indicating a chair.

Shepherd
put his hands on the back of the proffered chair but remained standing.
"Is it just me you want to speak to? Only the message I got was to bring
the team. They're outside."

"Bring
them in," Holmes said, "the more the merrier."

Shepherd
disappeared, reappearing moments later with two men who followed him into the
room.

"Mr.
Holmes." Shepherd said. "This is Mickey Stubbs." He indicated a
fit looking man in his mid thirties, casually dressed in jeans and sweatshirt.
A thick mop of dark brown hair sat above a weathered outdoor face. The lobe of
his right ear was missing and a two-inch scar on his right cheek crinkled as his
face cracked into a grin when they shook hands.

Shepherd
introduced the second man. "This is Bobby
Dern
."

Holmes
looked
Dern
up and down as they shook hands. Short
blonde hair partially framed an almost cherubic face, with his age hard to
determine. Probably around twenty-five, he thought. He was dressed similar to
Stubbs, only the sweatshirt being a different colour. His eyes said it all. A
slight overlapping of the skin at the inner
canthi
seemed to pull his upper eyelids into a position that at a glance made them
look weary with fatigue. His eyes were a deep blue, almost black in colour,
very alert and extremely cold. Looking at him was like looking into a freezer.
If a man's eyes were the gateway to his soul, then this man's soul would be
forever locked away.

Dern
smiled, if the
brief movement of his lower face counted as such, then broke hand contact and
sat down.

"Okay,
Greg." Holmes began. "I've got you here because an urgent job has
come up and I need it sorting. In fact, I really need it sorting as of
yesterday."

"Yesterday's
business runs a little more expensive than tomorrow's Mr. Holmes."
Shepherd said, getting down to details.

“I
know.” Holmes said, “I'm willing to pay over the odds for you to dispose of
this man.”

Holmes
slid the single typed sheet and the file photograph of Norton across the table.
He took a long draw on his cigar, the tip glowing deep red as he did so.

Shepherd
picked up the sheet and read the contents. He held the photograph for several
seconds, as if logging it into a memory bank and then handed both items to
Dern
.
Dern's
actions were almost
identical, his cold eyes staring at the photograph. After Stubbs had mentally
logged the information, he gave the photograph to Shepherd and put the sheet
back on the desk.

"I
need that man taking out quickly," Holmes said, "
he's
cost me a lot of money and killed one of my people." He recalled the
events at
Creasy's
and added, "Maybe even more
than one."

"What
are you offering?" Shepherd asked.

"Fifty
thousand, when he's dead.
Nothing up front."

"It
would run you forty thousand anyway, and you're saying this one's urgent."
Shepherd said, getting ready for a haggling session.

"I'm
sorry," Holmes said, sitting forward in his chair, "I haven't made
myself very clear." He took another long pull on the cigar and exhaled a
blue stream of smoke towards the ceiling. He looked at Shepherd. "A hit, I
know, would normally cost forty. I am offering you fifty thousand each. As I
said, I need it doing fast."

Shepherd
looked at both Stubbs and
Dern
. They nodded in
unison. To Holmes he said, "You've got yourself a deal."

Holmes
waved his cigar in the air. "There should be a woman with him.
Blonde.
Tasty.
Great
tits and a nice arse.
Do what you like with her, bit of a
perk,
just make sure she doesn't talk."

The
three men stood up, no handshakes, no signatures, niceties not required. Stubbs
and
Dern
left the room. Shepherd turned at the door
and looked at Holmes. "Within twelve hours," he said,
"guaranteed."

As
the door closed behind Shepherd, Holmes took the sheet of paper from the desk,
folded it, and put it in his pocket.

-38-

Norton
left Sarah in the visitor’s waiting room of the Royal Mail security section
with a cup of coffee and a selection of week old magazines. During the drive
from the Senator Hotel into the city, he had telephoned Jamie Stewart. The
Scotsman had agreed to see him at such short notice because of the urgency in
his voice.

Stewart
met him outside the
visitors
room and escorted him to
the data input room, the room he had mentioned, but not shown to Norton on his
previous visit.

"I'm
sorry to barge in on you like this," Norton said, as they each took a seat
normally occupied by the computer operators, "but I need some information
urgently and I think you can give it to me."

"Yes
of course, anything." Stewart replied. "As I said before, I'll be
only too pleased to help."

"Where's
the satellite dish for your tracking system?" Norton asked. He already
knew the answer, just wanting the confirmation.

"It's
on top of the Senator Hotel, over in west London." Stewart replied, a
quizzical look on his face.

Norton
leaned back on the chair. Holmes is not just involved in a bombing campaign, he
thought, he has to be preparing a robbery. That at least would begin to make sense.
Perhaps the tracking system itself might hold the answer. He looked at Stewart.
"Can you tell me how the tracking system works?"

"Well
yes, but it can get a bit technical. It's not a simple system."

Norton
smiled, "Just try and take into account that I know as much about
computers as I do about the dark side of the moon, which is very little."

Stewart
took a deep breath and shuffled on his seat stalling for thinking time.
Condensing a route through a six hundred million pound hi-
tec
system was not as easy as it sounded. He took a pen from his shirt pocket and
absently twiddled it in his fingers.

"Here
goes," he said, after several seconds paused in thought. "I'll leave
out the technical mumbo jumbo as far as I can. I suppose how it works and why
it works are two different things. To start with, each vehicle in the system
has a built-in computer with its own unique code. The system, by the way,
relates to the vehicles that carry valuable loads, not the everyday
postie
delivering parcels on his rounds. Before any of the
vehicles can move or even start their engines, the driver has to enter his
particular code to activate the onboard computer. He gets that code when he
signs for the keys. The vehicle codes are changed every day by the way. The
computer then initializes all of the control systems, engine management,
steering, brakes, and so on, everything the normal driver takes for granted
every time he starts the engine. Once the activation is complete, the computer
sends out a continuous coded pulse to a satellite in geo-stationary orbit. The
information is relayed from the satellite to the control room computers, and
vice-versa, via the dish on the hotel roof. The control room is the room we
were in last time."

"What
information do you get out of it?"

"Let
me explain. The satellite is always in the same place in space over the United
Kingdom, that's what I meant by geo-stationary, and it has an exceedingly
detailed map of the UK in its memory banks. Now, if we are moving a valuable
load in say, Cumbria, we just enter the co-ordinates of the depot and those of
the destination. The computers filter the map, and direct the cameras
automatically to show that area. The pictures that we get down here on our big
screen are digitized enhancements of what the satellite cameras are actually
seeing, everything is in real time, and the pictures are extremely detailed.
Even without the cameras, if there's extremely heavy cloud or poor
atmospherics, sun spots and the like, the pulse tracker is so accurate we can
pinpoint a vehicle to within its own length. So, when it leaves the depot to
when it gets back, we know exactly where it is to within a couple of yards. As
an extra piece of security, the driver cannot stop the pulse, only the master
computer at the depot can do that. If the driver, or anyone else for that
matter, tries to interfere with it, it sends out a pulse on a different
frequency. The computer treats that second frequency as an emergency beacon,
that obviously alerts us, and then we alert the police. As soon as there is an
activation of the emergency beacon, the onboard computer immobilizes the
vehicle by detonating six explosive bolts that separate the engine from the
gearbox. That of course stops it being moved, and it also cuts off the
electrics and seals the doors, but keeps the climate control working for the
benefit of the crew."

Stewart
looked at Norton like a teacher eyeing his favourite pupil, "Did you get
all that?"

Norton
nodded. "Can you do a test to see if it's still working?"

A
look of concern crossed Stewart's face. "Of course, that doesn't present a
problem." He faced Norton. "Is there something going on I should know
about?"

"Can
you just run a
check,
I’m not sure how much time we
have. Just see if it's alright."

Stewart
turned to one of the terminals and hit several keys. As before, typing too fast
for Norton to follow. Moments later, a bar graph displayed horizontally across
the monitor's screen, the right hand edge fluctuating slightly.

"What's
the wobbly bit on the end?" Norton asked

Stewart
smiled. "That's just a variation in current. It registers every time a
lift is used or anything else that uses a large amount of electricity. That's
quite normal."

Norton
looked at the screen. "I assume then that the system is still up and
running?"

"Yes, absolutely."
He turned away
from the screen to face Norton. "Are you going to tell me what the problem
is?"

"It
may well be that someone will attempt to put it out of action." He decided
not to mention the device that had been planted and then removed. "Is
there a back up system, in case the main one fails?"

"There
is, but we're having some problems with it. We can get pictures but the pulse
tracking software is playing up. Nor are we getting accurate locations, it's
giving us readings that can be anything up to a mile off."

Norton
considered that, but dismissed the idea of Holmes having anything to do with
the technical problems. If he could knock out the system technically, there
would be little point in taking the risk of planting a bomb.

Turning
his attention back to Stewart he said, "Do you have any high value loads
being moved in the next few days?"

"No,
we don't, but the Bank might have."

"Which
bank?"

"
The
Bank of course, the Bank of
England."

"How
many people actually use this system?" Norton asked. To his knowledge,
only the Royal Mail vehicles were covered.

"Well
us, of course. But because of the overall cost, we decided to rent out
satellite time to other selected users. We’ve fitted their vehicles with the
satellite tracking system so everything works properly from our control room.
We may even make a profit over the next decade. That would be one in the eye
for the..."

"Who
are the other users?" Norton asked, a little sharply, causing Stewart to
give him a sideways glance. Norton knew the system was the brainchild of this
man, and of course it was only natural he wanted to talk about it. But now was
not the time. Holmes had to be planning a robbery why else would he want to
knock out a tracking system, if he was to stop him he needed information
quickly.

Stewart
interrupted his thoughts. "I'm sorry if I ramble a bit," he said,
waving an excusing hand at the bank of equipment. "I get carried away with
it sometimes."

Norton
nodded and shrugged his shoulders, a grin spreading on his face.

"Anyway,"
Stewart continued, "the Bank of England and six security firms who move
high value loads as a matter of course, rent satellite time from us."

"Can
you check if any of the others have a high value load moving soon?"

The
monitor screen turned black after Stewart typed in the request. "Here we
are," he said as the screen came to life.

Norton
looked at the screen. He could not make any sense of the information displayed.
It looked to him to be in a one-time code. The sort used by yesteryears spies
to send messages back and forth.

"You'll
probably find this gobble-de-gook," Stewart confirmed, "at least I
hope you do. It's a code we use to deter hackers."

"What
does it say?"

"The
Bank's got a big run planned for tomorrow. Secure Freight, our latest contract has
a training run on Friday. No load, it’s just a dry run to familiarize their
operators with the system, other than that, nothing until one of our runs in
four days time."

"What's
the bank running, a stack of old notes to Loughton?"

"No,
much more exciting than that, it's a gold bullion run, picking up from Heathrow
then back to the Old Lady in
Threadneedle
Street."

Norton
felt a tightness grip his chest, Heathrow Airport, the common denominator. What
is he up to, he
thought,
you don't have to bomb it to
rob it.

To
Stewart he said, "Can you follow the progress of the run, or is that
limited to the Bank?"

"Everything
is run from here. The Bank
staff come
over to run the
equipment but I can sit in while it’s going on."

Norton
nodded and took a note pad from a table. He wrote down a telephone number and
handed it to Stewart. "You'll be able to get me on that number twenty four
hours a day. I'd like you to watch the run from Heathrow back into London and
call me the immediately if anything odd happens."

"You're
expecting something then," Stewart stated. "Shall I inform the police
or will you be doing that?”

“You
do everything you would normally do, just add me to the list of contacts, right
at the top.”

“Yes
Okay,” he said, heartening to his task, a chance arising to put the system to
work. The very reason he had designed it in the first place, a chance to put
down the sceptics who tried to cancel the project in its infancy. Those who
said it would never work, that it would never pay for itself. He would do exactly
as Norton asked. He would follow it every step of the way.

“When
do you expect something to happen?” Stewart asked, trying to restrain the
eagerness in his voice. “Do you think it will be at the Airport end or at the
Bank?”

“I
really don’t know. I haven’t any firm
intelligence,
it’s not much more than an educated guess at the minute. I can only assume that
if it does happen it will be west of London, in the outer suburbs or on the
motorway. Just like everybody else they are going to be bound by the traffic.”

As
he stood up a thought breezed in and out of his mind before he had chance to
analyse it. “I’ve got to go now, arrangements to make. Can I rely on you?”

“Yes,”
Stewart said, looking Norton straight in the eye, “you can definitely rely on
me.”