Pandemic (64 page)

Five minutes later the main door opened again and the caretaker re-emerged. He climbed into his car and drove away from the house and down the road.

‘He’ll have been explaining the security systems and other stuff to Nicholson, I guess,’ Westwood commented, not taking his eyes off the scene.

‘Here come the bad guys.’ Richter watched as the other vehicle, the one that had been behind Nicholson’s when they arrived, reappeared down the road, turned into the drive and
stopped outside the safe house. Three men got out and looked all around them, then two of them walked over to the house and went inside while the third began walking slowly around the property
itself.

‘That figures,’ Westwood said. ‘They’ll have two guards inside covering Nicholson, and the third guy outside to intercept anyone who wanders onto the property by accident
and to shoo away neighbours or salesmen.’

‘OK, John,’ Richter lowered the binoculars and rolled on to his side to face Westwood, ‘now we know the strength of the opposition, are you happy with the plan we worked
out?’

Westwood nodded. ‘We figured there would be up to four heavies plus Nicholson and maybe the caretaker as well, so the odds are actually better than we calculated,’ he said.
‘Are you sure you can handle this, Paul, because it really will be my neck on the line in there?’

‘Trust me, John. I can take care of them.’

‘You’ll have Sally to answer to if you don’t,’ Westwood added, and Richter smiled briefly at him.

‘Just trust me,’ he said again. ‘It’s what I do.’

For another hour the two men lay silently, studying the house through their binoculars, but saw no sign of movement apart from the patrolling guard.

At three twenty Richter turned to Westwood again. ‘It’s time, John. I know you won’t need it, but good luck in there.’

‘Right,’ Westwood eased up into a sitting position and glanced at his left wrist. ‘I’ve got three twenty-one.’

‘Check,’ Richter said, looking at his own watch. ‘You should be outside the house by three forty-five, but that’s not critical. But four zero five is, OK?’

‘I’ve got it, Paul. Four zero five. Just be sure you’re ready by then.’

‘I will be. They’ll be expecting you to be armed, so are you carrying?’

‘No,’ Westwood replied.

Richter reached into his inside jacket pocket, pulled out the Browning Hi-Power and passed it over. ‘It’s got a full magazine, but you shouldn’t have to use it. The safety
catch is on and there’s one in the chamber. Just remember it belongs to the Queen and I’ve had to sign for it, so I would appreciate getting it back sometime.’

Westwood nodded. ‘Right now, making sure your paperwork gets completed properly is the least of my worries, but I’ll do my best. You’ve got the SIG?’

‘You bet,’ Richter said.

Without another word, Westwood moved backwards into the relative darkness of the copse, and began making his way down towards the main thoroughfare and the side road where he’d parked his
Chrysler.

For fifteen minutes Richter did nothing, lying motionless to watch both the house and the approach road. The outside guard didn’t seem to be following any set pattern in his patrolling of
the grounds, but Richter guessed that would change after Westwood had arrived. Once the fly was in the web the spider could relax.

At three thirty-five Richter himself started down towards the safe house across the largely open countryside that lay in front of him. Even when the guard was out of sight he moved as quietly as
possible, keeping low just in case one of the other men was watching through a window.

By three forty-five, now only twenty yards from the boundary of the property, Richter crouched down behind some bushes. He could see an easy way into the grounds almost right in front of him
– a narrow gap in the hedge that he reckoned he could squeeze through – but he was going to wait for Westwood’s arrival before he moved again.

He heard the Chrysler Voyager before he saw it, heard the noise of its tyres on the road. He saw the light-coloured roof of the vehicle moving slowly, decelerating further to make the turn into
the driveway. And then he saw Westwood himself in the driving seat as the car pulled up outside the house.

As Westwood had explained, the drive was equipped with sensors to detect any vehicle approaching the property, so Richter wasn’t surprised when the main door of the house opened at almost
the same moment as the outside guard reached the Chrysler.

John Westwood braked to a halt and switched off the engine. He opened the door just as a man walked over and stopped beside it. His jacket was hanging open so Westwood could
see the bulge of a shoulder holster and the butt of an automatic pistol.

Beyond him, the front door of the house swung open and another man peered out. It wasn’t Nicholson, and Westwood heaved a sigh of relief. That had been one of their worries, since
Richter’s plan called for Westwood to get inside the house before any of them realized who he was.

‘Your name?’ the man standing beside the car demanded.

‘Mike Murphy,’ Westwood said. ‘I’m expected here.’

The guard gestured for Westwood to lift his arms above his head and then frisked him expertly. He found the Browning almost immediately – Westwood had simply tucked it into the rear
waistband of his trousers – removed the magazine and worked the slide to eject the round already in the breach, then tossed the pistol and the magazine onto the driver’s seat of the
Chrysler.

When he was checked again, Westwood realized that the man was looking for a wire. After a moment, the guard stepped back, satisfied. ‘Follow me,’ he said.

At the front door of the house, the other guard stood waiting and now stepped back to precede Westwood into the building.

As Westwood walked down the hallway, he prayed again that Richter was up to it.

The moment the outside guard turned to escort Westwood to the front door, Richter moved. He slipped through the hedge and ducked down immediately. As soon as the patrolling
guard was out of sight, he stood up again and sprinted across to the house, flattening himself against the wall and concealed between two large bushes. Whichever direction the guard now approached
from, he would hear the man’s footsteps on the gravel path before the guard could see him. That was all the edge Richter needed.

He eased the SIG P226 from the waistband of his trousers. The extra length of the attached silencer made the weapon much more cumbersome than a normal pistol, but Richter was more than willing
to trade that inconvenience for the ability to fire nearly silently.

But the guard moved much more quietly than expected, and he was within ten feet of Richter’s hiding place before he heard him. Richter eased back against the wall and ducked down slightly,
waiting for the man to pass. But as the guard drew level, his peripheral vision must have detected the intruder for he swung around, simultaneously grabbing for his shoulder holster.

Richter dropped the silenced SIG and launched himself off the wall like a torpedo out of a tube. He didn’t want to kill the guard: he had no quarrel with him or the other two men inside
the house. They were just doing a job, maybe hired for the day or perhaps junior CIA agents. But Richter needed to subdue him quickly, because the clock was already running.

Westwood followed the guard across the entrance hallway and into a spacious inner hall. Before the man proceeded any further he stopped and motioned for Westwood to lift his
arms above his head.

‘The guy outside just checked me,’ Westwood said, raising his hands.

‘And now I’m checking you.’

Apparently satisfied, he gestured for Westwood to follow him again, heading towards a door set in wooden panelling, which Westwood knew led down to the underground briefing-room. So far, things
were going more or less as Richter had predicted.

Outside the soundproof entrance of the cellar room below, he pressed the bell twice. Then he opened the door, pushed Westwood inside, and pulled it closed behind him.

The lighting in the briefing-room was bright and harsh after the comparative gloom of the house above, and Westwood had absolutely no difficulty in recognizing the other figure in the room,
seated at a small table. But Nicholson stared back for a few seconds without apparent recognition before his face darkened.

‘Westwood, you meddling bastard,’ he spat. ‘Where’s Murphy?’

‘Murphy didn’t make it.’

Nicholson nodded as if it was the answer he had been half-expecting. ‘I suppose you think you’ve been clever, trying to trace me through the database.’

‘Seems I succeeded.’

‘Whatever,’ Nicholson waved a hand dismissively. ‘I was going to arrange for you to have an accident anyway,’ he added, picking up a pistol from the table and levelling
it at Westwood’s stomach, ‘but now I won’t bother. You can just disappear.’

‘Dead bodies have a habit of turning up inconveniently.’ Westwood forced a certain bravado into his voice.

‘Not in this case. There’s a disused well just about five miles from here. It’s not marked on any maps, and it’s full of the bones of people who’ve been foolish
enough to cross me. I’ll cut your tongue out just to keep you quiet, then I’ll drop you down it, and you’d better pray the fall kills you. Otherwise it’ll take you days to
die.’

Even used to the hardened attitudes of his Company colleagues, Westwood was shocked by the ruthless venom evident in Nicholson’s tone, and again prayed silently that Richter knew what he
was doing.

As Richter crashed headlong into the guard, he groped for the man’s hands as they tumbled backwards onto the neatly trimmed lawn fringing the gravel path. The guard had
managed to pull out his pistol – a nine-millimetre Austrian Glock – and was trying to bring it to bear when Richter grabbed his right wrist and twisted it up and back.

‘Pull the trigger now, and it’ll be the last thing you do,’ Richter panted in the man’s ear, pushing his hand further back until the pistol barrel was directly under the
guard’s chin.

As the man suddenly relaxed. Richter seized the barrel of the Glock with his left hand and twisted it away. But at that moment the guard brought his left knee up hard towards Richter’s
groin. Feeling the sudden movement, Richter twisted sideways, taking the impact on his outer thigh, as he tossed the Glock behind him.

The guard pulled himself away and scrambled to his feet. Richter recognized immediately from his stance that he’d been trained in one of the martial arts.

‘I think you’re forgetting something.’ Westwood took his eyes from the barrel of the pistol and looked up at Nicholson’s face. ‘If you kill me,
you’ll never recover the CAIP file and those flasks. I’ve already made certain they’ll get into the hands of someone who can ensure the maximum exposure.’

For a moment, Nicholson just stared at him, then he threw back his head and laughed.

‘I expected better from you, Westwood. Do you have any idea how corny that routine sounds? It’s just bullshit and you know it.’

‘You want to take a chance that I’m bluffing? Walter Hicks knows where I am. He knows that I’m meeting you here.’

Nicholson stood up and moved closer. ‘The most Hicks can possibly know is that you’re supposed to be meeting a man named McCready. There’s absolutely nothing to tie me to
McCready, so I’m quite happy to take the risk. Even if you have lodged the evidence with someone else, I can soon persuade you to cancel your arrangements.’

‘Dream on,’ Westwood murmured.

‘It’s no dream. You’re vulnerable, Westwood, and you know it. I reckon if I strapped your wife and kids into a row of chairs in front of you and started cutting slices off them
you’d change your mind real quick.’

Nicholson smiled and, for the first time in his life, Westwood literally felt his blood run cold – a cliché come hideously to life – as he realized Nicholson would do exactly
what he threatened. The man’s life and his career were on the line, and he would do whatever it took to contain the situation.

The guard stepped forward, left arm extended in front of him, the hand open and ready to grab, his right hand flattened into a killing blade, just waiting for the opportunity
to strike.

Karate. Richter recognized the stance, but still he didn’t move. The man took another step forward, then lunged for Richter’s jacket with his left hand, his right swinging downwards
and sideways. If the blow had connected it could have broken Richter’s neck, but the moment the guard moved, so did his opponent.

Richter stepped forward, blocked the strike with his left hand and turned to his left, stepping under the guard’s right arm and seizing his wrist with both hands. Then he straightened up,
pulling the guard’s arm down and towards him, while simultaneously bending forwards.

The momentum of his strike had slightly unbalanced the guard and Richter’s move did the rest. The man stumbled forward, then somersaulted over Richter’s bent back, but the Englishman
didn’t let go. He held on to the man’s arm, hauling it backwards as the guard’s body hit the ground hard, instantly dislocating his shoulder.

He screamed briefly but Richter hadn’t finished. He released the guard’s arm, leaned forward and hit him hard in the stomach, driving the breath from his body. Richter reached into
his own pocket, pulled out a roll of brown adhesive tape and a couple of plastic cable ties. He rolled the guard onto his front, pulled his arms roughly behind him and lashed his wrists together
with the ties, then pulled a length of tape off the roll and gagged him. Richter half-carried, half-dragged him across to the wall of the house and dumped him beside it. Then he stood up, surveyed
his work and nodded in approval.

Richter crossed to the gravel path, picked up the Glock and stuck it into his rear waistband. Then he retrieved the SIG and began walking cautiously around the house towards the main door,
keeping close to the wall and, hopefully, out of view of the security cameras. Halfway there he glanced at his watch. Three fifty-three. Just about right.

John Westwood just stared at Nicholson silently, then looked down to sneak a surreptitious glance at his watch. Eleven minutes to go.