Payback (7 page)

Chancey
grinned and walked across. He had changed into his party clothes: clean denims, red jacket and loud Hawaiian shirt. ‘Yeah.
Bias
. Then we
pati
good.’

Bolitho
turned his back as he approached, drawing his knife. Banto watched impassively, knowing exactly what was going to happen. It did not occur to him to warn Chancey. This was a battle between two tribes. Neither of them his own, and so none of his business. Not yet...

Bolitho
was swift and clinical, despatching Chancey silently in front of Banto, severing the windpipe to prevent any screams. Satisfied with his work, Bolitho looked down again at Banto. ‘You people are just like the Vietcong gooks to me,’ he spat, as if in some perverse attempt at justification.

But
he saw that Banto was already back on his haunches, rocking himself in his trance. Banto was somewhere else. His own battle with the big man was not yet. For the moment he was safe. This he knew. But that battle would certainly come. It must. He would have Payback. Soon the big man would have to face a real warrior. Then Payback.

Chapter Four

This time the Animal Freedom Miltant Warriors met at a dingy bed-sit in Clerkenwell. Lydia had never been there before and had some difficulty finding the place. Having been buzzed in on the entryphone, she climbed the poorly lit staircase to the third floor of the pre-war conversion. The once elegant Georgian townhouse had long since been broken up into as many flats as some greedy absentee landlord could create. The hall had been cluttered with bikes and prams, and reeked of a cocktail of garlic, cabbage and the unwashed. Now as she ran up, holding her breath against the stink, she imagined cockroaches being crushed under the rush matting with her every step. Outside each paint-chipped door were bags of festering rubbish. Some even had unwashed tall milk bottles waiting to be collected by a milkman who had stopped calling a decade earlier.

As
she passed one flat, the door opened at the sound of her footfall, and she glimpsed the frightened eyes of a black man. Frightened of what? she wondered. The immigration authorities? DHSS inspectors? This certainly had the air of a place steeped in social security fraud. Or in milking local authority accommodation payments for asylum-seekers and homeless families. A used condom lying on a stair in front of her pointed to yet more murky possibilities.

At
last she reached flat six, knocked, and was let in by Sam Thrower. ‘I see we’ve dressed down for tonight,’ he sneered at her, nodding to her denims. ‘Wise move.’

Lydia
did not rise to the bait. She pushed past him, nodded to the rest of the group, and sat at the kitchen table. A woman offered her a can of beer, but she refused. ‘Am I late, or were you all early?’ she asked, immediately suspicious that Thrower had been holding a pre-meeting without her. There were several empty cans on the table, and a full ashtray.

‘
We started half an hour ago,’ Thrower said, unabashed. ‘Some of us were still worried about your commitment on this one. Seeing as how it’s your father’s place and all.’

Lydia
could feel her short temper rising as she looked accusingly at the four others. All avoided eye contact, except Thrower. ‘And?’ she demanded.

‘
And...we
trust
you. We really do. On a majority vote...But then you know how democratic we are.’ He made it clear that he was the dissenter.

‘
Look, I don’t need all this!’ she exploded. ‘If you want to go ahead without me, that’s just fine with me.’

The
others squirmed in embarrassment, all social non-confrontationists. All except Thrower. ‘Don’t get your Victoria’s Secrets in a twist, your ladyship. Like I said, we trust you. In fact, we’ve even decided to show it, by letting you actually plant the bomb. Your very own torching,’ he sneered. ‘Think of it as a coming-out ball. You’ve posed around holding my coat often enough. Now it’s your turn. Time to cross the line.’ He watched, goading her into bottling out in front of the others. ‘If we get caught, you’ll make real nice jail bait for all the sisters in Holloway.’

‘
That’s enough of that!’ snapped Chrissie, who was also a zero-tolerance gay rights activist. ‘I don’t need to hear any sexist, homophobic crap. The only person I have a problem with right now is you.’ Emboldened, the two others—Tony, a mid-twenties student-drop-out, and Joan an odd, intense woman in her late fifties—murmured their agreement with Chrissie and turned their eyes as one on Thrower.

Lydia
nodded a thank you to her, and then stood up, pulling back on her coat.

‘
Where the hell are you going?’ Thrower asked, a hint of panic now in his voice.

‘
I don’t do anything on a majority vote. I’m out of here,’ she replied, making for the door. Her volatile temper had got the better of her again.

‘
No. Wait. We can work this thing out.’

‘
Work it out? Like, you apologising?’

All
eyes were still fixed on Thrower. It was a showdown that everyone knew had been inevitable. He consistently taunted her and she was on a short fuse. One of the two had to back down or leave the group. That had been clear for months.

Thrower
shifted in his chair, sweating. Then he laughed nervously. ‘Sure. I want you in. But this is serious stuff. I needed to be sure. That’s my job.’

Not
good enough.’ She was now at the door.

The
older woman, Joan, knew that Lydia had just gone too far. She had already won, but with her last salvo had foolishly called for Thrower to humiliate himself. Bad manners. And bad politics. She tried to defuse the situation. ‘I think we’re forgetting the mice, rats and monkeys in all this. I think we need to put them before our own petty squabbles, don’t you?’

But
Lydia, still fired up, was now in no mood for anything less than a crushing victory. ‘I simply need to hear Sam say he, personally, wants me on this raid. That’s all.’ She held his eyes, and waited for him to break.

After
an agonising silence, he finally blinked and broke off eye contact. ‘Lydia. I want—you—on—the—raid,’ he said, enunciating his words slowly, as if talking to a child.

Suddenly
Lydia felt foolish. She had won, she had avenged his class-ridden carping. But at what price? ‘Apology accepted,’ she responded, relief in her voice.

‘
Let’s forget about all of that now, and get on with the planning.’ Joan again tried to help defuse things. ‘All right, you two?’

Thrower looked up
, cold, controlled anger welling inside. ‘Sure,’ he said, sniffing, fighting to regain his dignity. ‘Why not? Let’s run through the plan. We’ll do it once. Twice. And then ten times more.’ Reaching into his bag he took out copies of a large-scale Ordnance Survey map, a selection of long-range photographs he had taken, an aerial shot, and a DVD of the inside of the plant shot by the temp he had got in there a month earlier. As ever, a militarily thorough approach, reflecting the many weeks of surveillance and intelligence gathering that he had co-ordinated. It made Lydia feel sheepish over her attack on him. ‘How many people work there?’ she asked, trying to normalise the situation.

‘
Fifty-three. And a few temps.’

‘
And what animals do they use?’ Chrissie probed, also trying to clear the air.

‘
Rats, mice,’ Thrower replied. Then, looking again at Lydia, he added, ‘And pigs.’

‘
What
exactly
are the pigs being used for?’ Joan asked.

‘
Human transplant research. Xenotransplants,’ Thrower said. ‘They’re having some “success” with porcine organ donors, animals specially bred for hypochondriac mil-lionaires. A breed of genetically modified pigs is created specifically to match their personal DNA profile. So, any time they need a xenograft—new liver, heart or kidney—well, Hey Piggo! Look no further. There’s a little herd of porkers just
dying
to oblige. Cute, eh?’

Lydia
felt sick. Until she had seen the magazine article a few weeks earlier, she had no idea her father was involved in this side of genetic engineering. ‘How long has this research been going on?’

‘
Two years. He was one of the first into it.’

All
the faces turned to Lydia. But if they expected some dewy-eyed apologist they were greatly mistaken. They still did not really know her.

‘
What kind of bomb do I get to plant,’ she asked, trying now to impress. ‘Five pounds of Semtex H? Incendiaries? Or a car bomb?’

Her
outward calm belied the tearing rage inside she felt at her father. How could he? How could he do these things? Any doubts she may have felt after their bonding dinner were now gone. It was war on his business. Open war.

*

‘Mr Bates. Tom Bates?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
Can you talk? Something personal...’

‘
Who is this?’

‘
My name’s Perry Mitchell. From Management International.’

Tom
immediately recognised the name of the executive search agency. Suddenly the man’s conspiratorial telephone approach made sense. ‘That’s OK. I can talk.’

‘
Good. I wondered if you might be able to help me with an assignment I’ve just taken on. It’s a senior position with a quoted international conglomerate. VP level. Consumer goods. Some retail. Own manufacturing. Big ambitions in Asia. China. Acquisitions. JVs. All that. They want someone youngish, with a strategic consulting background. And investor relations’ experience. Someone used to board-level counselling with major PLCs. Someone ready for a first move into senior general management. Reading between the lines, they’re looking for their next CEO a year or so down the line.’

Tom
was regularly headhunted, but rarely felt tempted. ‘What’s it paying?’ Between his days with WMC and work with Barton, he was already earning over £180,000 a year, plus his maturing share options, and this question generally cut short the time wasters.

‘F
or the right person, I’ve been told it’s virtually open cheque book. Not less than £250,000. But make the right case and that could quickly double. Plus options, of course. The stock has been seriously under-performing the sector.’ Mitchell let the juicy bait dangle for a few seconds before continuing. ‘I won’t go through the usual pretence of asking if you know anyone you’d recommend. It’s you we’re interested in. You’re first on a very short list. Worth a meet?’

Bates
did not hesitate. He always kept his options open, and he was still fuming at Barton’s attack on him. ‘When and where?’

‘
My club? You know The Travellers—Pall Mall? Breakfast or lunch tomorrow. I’d like to move quickly.’

‘
Lunch is better. How will I know you?’

‘
I’ll meet you in the entrance hall. And don’t worry. I’ll know you.’

Mitchell
hung up and smiled. Arranging the first meeting with his targets under the guise of headhunting almost always worked. His victims arrived feeling insecure, and under a self-imposed veil of secrecy. Being headhunted sets up one of the few times when perfectly respectable executives lie to their secretaries, their peers and very probably their wives or husbands as well. For the first look-see meeting, most kept it all very secret, not wanting to worry their partners needlessly about possible domestic upheaval—moving house, changing schools and all the other distractions that could go with a new career. So they had phantom dental appointments and the like, and effectively for an hour or two disappeared from the face of their familiar worlds. It was the perfect cover for the Service’s senior recruiter.

Perry
Mitchell put down Bates’s file and went through to his outer office where his secretary was binding some document or other. ‘Book me a table at the club tomorrow, will you? For two. One o’clock,’ he said.

‘
But you’re down to lunch with the Malaysians,’ she reminded him. They were looking to recruit a full management team of European nationals to run their new car assembly plant being built in South Wales.

‘
Something’s come up. I’ll have to skip off at noon.’ He avoided her eyes, knowing they would be registering major disapproval. She had been at Management International for over twenty years. In her judgement, nothing ‘came up’ that could ever be more important than major clients.

Feeling
thoroughly in the dog house, he went back to his office, closed the door again and opened the bottom drawer of his desk. Taking out the Lamb’s Navy dark rum, he poured two fingers, added a splash of water, and sipped thoughtfully. A delegation of Malaysian tin-bashers may be very important in its own right, but was as nothing when put alongside Sir James Barton’s terrifyingly dangerous game.

The
man had to be stopped.

*

Maddie rarely drank, other than taking wine with a meal. She had never been able to handle alcohol very well, and drinking on an empty stomach was ten times worse. Asking Tom out to dinner had seemed like a good idea at the time. Her husband had left suddenly the day before for his plant in Belize, without even noticing that it meant him missing their wedding anniversary. Dinner at the Savoy, followed by a romantic night upstairs, had been something of a tradition for them, and she had hoped that booking the usual suite might have been the key to rekindling their love life. But then she had got the call—from his
secretary
... Furious at James for standing her up, she badly needed not to be alone again that night, and to talk with somebody sympathetic. Someone who really knew James, and would understand. That had quickly thrown up just one name. Tom. Tom would listen. Tom would be able to help her come to terms with James’s violent mood swings and his vicious temper.

She
also needed to feel attractive again. To be treated properly.

‘
Well, here we are,’ she said self-consciously, sipping the champagne flute. Her mouth left a thick impression of pink lipstick on the rim. ‘Thanks for coming.’