Pay Off (2 page)

I guess he understood because the next time he tried was when I was fifteen, but I hadn't changed and this time I was old enough to tell him so, to tell him that blasting birds with shotguns wasn't my idea of fun and what was the point of raising birds just to shoot them out of the air and honest, father, I'd really rather not. It did hurt him, I know, but he didn't say anything and the guns went back to his study and he never took them out of the guncase other than to clean them from that day on.

He was of the old school, my father, huntin', shootin' and fishin', until a riding accident put paid to all but the fishing. Even that pleasure caused him pain, standing thigh high in fast flowing freezing water flicking flies at salmon, and his orthopaedic surgeon told him more than once that it was doing him no good. Humbug, my father told him, fishing and work are the only pleasures I've got left and I'm damned if you're going to take either away from me. He reckoned that the only good advice the surgeon ever gave him was to lie on the floor if the pain got too bad. It seemed 15 to work and I'd often go into his study and find him Iying on his back with his ebony stick by his side, reading one of his leather-bound books or going over a balance sheet, Bach playing on the stereo.

I'd sit by him and he would explain things like shareholders' funds, liabilities and provisions, loan capital; and by the time I was fourteen! could read a balance sheet and profit and loss account like a comic, understanding how a company operated just by looking at the figures. I was hooked faster than a careless salmon, which is exactly what he'd intended, because he had my career mapped out from the time I was born and there was no way on God's earth that I wasn't going to end up in my uncle's merchant bank.

He was a gentle man, and a gentleman, and other than where foxes, grouse and salmon were concerned he lacked the killer instinct. I was the same. I might not have inherited his passion for country pursuits but he had taught me to be honourable in business, never to cheat or lie, and to feel guilty if I broke any of his rules and now that was holding me back, and I had to find a killer because I knew I wouldn't be able to do the job myself.

Killers come in many forms but I wanted a professional, a mercenary. I'd arranged for a newsagent near my flat in Earl's Court to get me a copy of Professional Soldier magazine. It took him two weeks to get hold of it, and by the time he gave it to me it was a month out of date. It's one of the few places where mercenaries actually advertise their services between pages devoted to a thousand and one ways of killing silently and what's new in portable rocket launchers. You can buy everything you need to start or fight a war through the adverts in Professional Soldier, from jungle clothing and survival rations to the latest military hardware. You can also buy men. I picked out three possibilities and circled them in blue Biro.

SAS-trained small-arms expert requires work, distance no object. Experience in explosives, anti-tank combat and hand-to-hand. Box No. 156 Have gun, will travel. Does anyone out there need a combat vet who wants a piece of the action? London based. Box No. 324 Ex-para needs work. Anything considered. BoxNo. 512 I wrote the same letter to all three, telling them that I had an interesting proposition to put to them, that I'd pay well and that they were to phone me at the flat if they were interested. I stuck the envelopes down, put on first-class stamps and walked down the two flights of stairs to the street and put them in the nearest post box. The first call came two weeks later from mercenary number one, the SAS expert.

'You the man with an interesting proposition?' asked a rough Liverpool accent. 'This is Box 156.'

'You've got the right number,' I said. 'Who are you?'

'First things first. What's the job, where is it and how much are you paying?'

'I'd rather meet you first, then we can go over the details.'

'When and where?'

'The American Bar at the Savoy Hotel, Wednesday lunchtime, say half past one. How will I recognize you?'

'You won't. I'll find you. Carry a copy of The Times.'

'I imagine most of the people in the Savoy would be reading The Times. Make it the Mirror. I'll be wearing a dark blue suit and a red tie and I'll be sitting at the bar.'

'I'll be there.'

Wednesday at one o'clock, I got out of a taxi on the Strand and walked past the Savoy Taylors Guild to the huge canopy that marks the entrance to the Savoy. Across the road stonecleaners were scouring the dirt off the National Westminster Bank, and a thin film of white dust settled on my shoes. Porters in the Savoy's green and yellow livery were loading calfskin suitcases into a blue Daimler, while a suntanned executive sorted through his wallet. All were covered in white flecks of dust.

The foyer was almost deserted, so at least my friend Box IS6 wouldn't have any trouble recognising me. I dropped the Mirror onto the bar and asked for a Tamdhu as I slipped onto the stool. Caricatures of Liza Minelli, Lauren Bacall, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire and Greta Garbo, all by Almud Bonhorst, glared down at me from the walls and I raised my glass to them. I was proud to be performing in front of Hollywood's finest.

I spotted him as soon as he walked into the bar. He was impossible to miss: close cropped hair, a camouflage com- bat jacket and scruffy jeans. The boots were cherry red. He walked with his feet splayed outward, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his jacket as his head jerked left and right like a startled rabbit. Somehow I'd managed to lumber myself with a twenty-four carat headbanger, and if the only thing identifying me had been a copy of The Times I could have got rid of it and played innocent, but I was labelled as clearly as a jar of Nescafe at Sainsburys. Not only was I the only man in the Savoy carrying a copy of the Mirror and wearing a blue suit and red tie, but I was also the only person in the bar. All that was missing was a large neon sign above my head flashing the word 'sucker'. Hell, hell, hell.

'You the man with the mission?' he asked from six feet away. No, son, I'm the Avon lady. The barman's eyebrows shot up like clay pigeons, his chin dropped and my stomach turned over. Hell, hell, hell, should I bluff or run?

'Could be,' I said. 'What can I get you?'

'Guinness, a pint. And a packet of crisps. Salt and vinegar.' The drink he got, the crisps were off. I took him over to a table by the baby grand piano where he could nibble at the stuffed olives and not be within earshot of the barman.

'So what are you up to?' he asked, a piece of olive stuck firmly in the gap between his front teeth. I leant back in the decidedly uncomfortable chair, crossed my legs and narrowed my eyes. Bluff or run? No question about it. I might as well enjoy myself.

'First things first,' I said. 'Have you been in action before?' He looked uncomfortable, shifting in his seat and rubbing his boots together.

'Not as such, no, but I spent four years with an SAS territorial regiment, trained with them in Wales, live firing, explosives, the works.'

'Parachuting?'

'Some.'

'Freefall?'

'No, but I made four static line jumps.'

'That'll be a problem, the job I'm setting up requires a HALO from twenty thousand feet with full kit, at night. And there could be enemy fire.'

'Jesus, what are you planning?'

'I'm not planning anything, the planning has already been done. I'm just handling the recruitment. Two hundred men, hand-picked, for the Sultan of a small but very rich country out in the Middle East. Or more accurately the brother of the Sultan who wants to take over. There's a lot of money at stake because the country is swimming in oil. Our team will be freefalling in from a couple of Hercules and splitting into three sections, taking out the palace, the oil fields and the communication systems.

'The whole mission should take less than twelve hours, and we'll be taking no prisoners, on either side. In fact that's one of the stipulations of the job. A suicide pill will be 19 placed inside a fake tooth. The Sultan's brother can't afford to have anything go wrong with the attack, and if it does he wants to make sure there's nobody around to tell tales. And the sort of money he's paying he's entitled to expect that.'

By now the young 'SAS expert' was sweating and his cheeks were flushed. It was difficult to tell if it was the thought of having a dentist's drill in his mouth or swallowing poison or the Savoy's chair which was causing him the most distress. Hell, if he swallowed this story he'd swallow anything, the tooth, the poison, even the chair.

'We're going in with bazookas, mobile missile launchers, grenades, the works. It should be one hell of a war. And if, I mean when, we take over there's a good chance we'll be kept on as the new Sultan's bodyguard, unless the cunning old bastard tries some sort of double cross.

'He'll also be looking for help on the interrogation side afterwards. It seems the present Sultan has been tucking away hundreds of millions of dollars in bank accounts all around the world and our employer would obviously like to know where the money is.- I hope you've got a strong stomach, it's liable to get a bit messy.'

I don't know what the guy was looking for, cheap thrills, hard experience to beef up his part-time toy soldiering or what, but my Arabian tales had put the wind up him and no mistake. He'd stopped chewing on the stuffed olives and most of his pint was untouched.

'Well, I'm your man,' he said, and neither of us believed him for a moment. I took a few details from him, told him I'd be in touch and off he went into the wide blue yonder, a first-class prat and a second-class time-waster. I wanted a killer and I'd turned up a pussycat.

I never did hear from the Have gun, will travel vet. Maybe it was a joke, maybe he was Iying bleeding to death on some far-off battlefield I couldn't pronounce in a month of Remembrance Sundays, or crouching in ambush high in the hills of Afghanistan, maybe I've just got an overactive imagination, who knows? I never found out, anyway.

The ex-para got in touch two days after the headbanger. Quiet, confident, no messing about. His name was Jim Iwanek, he'd left the Paras eighteen months ago and had been working as a bodyguard for a casino operator until recently. Where could we meet? I wasn't superstitious so the Savoy seemed as good a place as any. He agreed. 'I'm about five-eleven, short black curly hair and I'll have on a brown check sports jacket,' he said, like a policeman giving evidence from his notebook. 'I look forward to meeting you.'

He was bang on time and just as he'd described. OK, he missed out the brown cord trousers, the brown brogues, the crisp white shirt and the light brown tie, but who's counting? I went over and introduced myself, bought him a double Teachers and took him to the table by the piano.

There was another thing he hadn't mentioned, his eyes. They were blue, a cold blue, difficult to read until maybe it was too late. Eyes that looked me over, measuring me up, calculating distances and angles, eyes that could just as easily work out twenty-four different ways of killing me bare-handed as they could spot a lie before it left my lips. You can tell a lot from a man's eyes: if he's Iying, how he'll react to stress, sometimes even what he's thinking. Iwanek's eyes were as cold and hard as ice daggers and he hardly blinked as he crossed his legs, smoothed out the creases in his trousers and asked me what it was I was offering.

I took a sip of my whisky. He hadn't touched his. 'I'm thirty-two years old and I am what's called a corporate financier, a sort of merchant banker without a bank. I help 21 arrange bank loans, company takeovers, share flotations, that sort of thing. Sometimes I act as a company doctor, find out where a firm is going wrong, why it's losing money, suggest a remedy. I make a lot of money doing what I do because I do it well, very well. I'm an expert and in the City I'm a survivor. More than that, I'm a winner. But I have a problem, a big problem, and it's one that I can't cope with own my own.'

Iwanek hadn't moved while I talked, but I knew I was being measured up, assessed, and labelled as either truthful or not to be trusted.

He leant back in his chair and steepled his fingers under his broad chin. His hands were smooth with long, delicate fingers and perfect, well-manicured nails. A stainless steel watch peeped out of his left sleeve as he gently tapped his two index fingers against his upper lip and looked into my soul.

'I've been wronged, badly wronged, and I'm out for revenge. Two men have done me a grave injustice, just how bad I can't tell you and maybe I never will but they deserve what's coming to them. You'll have to trust me on that score.

'One is a drugs dealer and property developer with very nasty criminal connections and a stack of dangerous friends. The other is one of his associates, a business man of sorts, a whizz kid who's acting as a front for the other guy's money.

'If these guys had crossed me in the City, if it had been business, then I could have coped on my own, I could have fought back. If they'd broken the law I could have gone to the police, or sued, but they were far too clever for that.'

'What did they do?' he asked.

'I can't tell you that. I just need your help, and I'm prepared to pay for it. And to pay well.'

'You want them killed,' he said, and it was a statement, not a question.

'I went them dead, or put away for alongtime. And I don't want to tee directly involved. I have aconscience, Jim, a set of values that was drilled into me from a very early age so no, I couldn't point a gun at either of them and pull the trigger.'

'You want someone else to do your dirty work.' Another statement.

'Yes, but not in the way you think. Sure, I could go into any of a dozen pubs in the East End, spend a little money and have their legs broken, maybe even killed. What would it cost me, a few hundred pounds? I could do that, but I couldn't live with myself afterwards. All my time working in the City I've been honest, I've never double crossed anybody or deliberately hurt them. My word is my bond might sound corny in this day and age but that's what my father taught me and those are the values that I've stuck to. I can't betray him or myself, and I won't even try.'