Authors: JT Brannan
STOP AT NOTHING: 'Mark Cole is Bond's US cousin mixed with the balls out action and killing edge of Jason Bourne' Parmenion Books (9 page)
The flight left right on schedule, the huge Airbus surging into the sky with an accelerative force that bordered on the miraculous. Cole tried to remember what the massive aircraft tipped the scales at – six hundred tonnes? Seven hundred? When he had trained to recapture ocean supertankers from terrorists back in his Navy days, he had been in awe of the fact that such vast behemoths did not simply sink beneath the waves; the scale of the things was extraordinary. But this! How on earth did it even get airborne, never mind stay there? He knew all the technical explanations, of course; but to see it, to
feel
it, was something else again.
He was glad of the distraction; his mind had been hitherto completely occupied with trying to figure out the purpose of his visit to London. There had to be something of vital importance to warrant this breach of protocol.
The message seemed to indicate that the purpose of his visit was to give Hansard a debrief on the assassination of William Crozier. But surely that wouldn’t warrant a visit to London? Cole felt sure that there must be another mission awaiting him.
Or maybe the whole situation was panicking Hansard, making him paranoid? The entire operation had been mounted under a cloak of absolute secrecy, right from the start; why should the debrief be any different?
The more Cole thought about it, the less able he was to come up with a viable answer.
Cole left the arrivals lounge of London Heathrow Airport at just past midnight. He passed through the automatic glass doors into the chill London air and breathed deeply. The city was familiar to him; he had been to Britain many times in the past, on exchanges with military and intelligence groups, and had even performed a job here in London just two years earlier.
A taxi pulled up next to him, the classic black cab, one of the mainstays of the London tourist experience. Cole got into the vehicle, asking the driver to take him to the Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane. He wasn’t going to stay there, however; he just didn’t want the taxi driver to know where he
was
staying. Besides, the Dorchester was a large luxury hotel, and as such kept too many detailed records of their patrons’ visits. He settled into the back of the black cab, getting comfortable for the thirty minute journey into the city.
Before his flight, he had called a London contact number. The person on the other side of the line had given him details for the morning’s meeting; a message that would have been meaningless not only to the messenger who delivered it, but also to anybody else who happened to be listening in. But Cole understood perfectly. He was to meet Hansard at the CIA safe house near Regent’s Park at 0900 hours later that morning. Cole knew of the existence of the place, although he had never been there. It was certainly a secure environment, Cole thought with a small degree of comfort.
Cole had then called to book himself into the Devonshire; not one of the major hotels, but nice enough, and it was conveniently located on Devonshire Street, just across the park from St John’s Wood. He had used one of his many untraceable, but quite legitimate, credit cards, this one in the name of James Driscoll. It was one of the secure identities that Cole had secretively set up for himself; even Hansard was unaware of its existence.
Using cash, although untraceable in theory, was in reality no longer worth the risk. Anyone paying cash these days was immediately regarded with suspicion. Indeed, hotel management within the capital, even in a family-run concession like the Devonshire, had been provided with a special telephone number to call when clients paid in cash. The call would be routed through to Special Branch, the intelligence wing of the Metropolitan Police, who shared the information directly with the Security Service, better known as MI5, who would then cross-reference the details with other information kept on their files. An enquiry would soon be launched if the service’s instincts were aroused, and a surveillance team from A Branch would be assigned if it was thought that the situation warranted it.
After the anthrax attack on Wembley Stadium three years ago, which had killed over two thousand people and left thousands more in hospital, no chances were being taken. Emergency powers were granted to both the police and intelligence services, and the budgets of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, which had become available for public scrutiny in recent years, had once again been made a matter of secrecy. It was thought that the budgets for all three services had been increased by a factor of four since the tragedy of ‘Black Saturday’, and whilst GCHQ predictably used the money to increase its electronic and signals intelligence capability, the other two services had invested heavily in human intelligence. The number of agents employed by MI5 alone was now thought to stand at somewhere near four thousand, and it was now possible to actively investigate anything that needed investigating. And so Cole used a credit card whenever he travelled.
The half hour journey passed quickly enough, and Cole was soon peering through the windows at the illuminated beauty of Marble Arch as they turned with the traffic, heavy even at this late hour, onto Park Lane.
The black cab stopped outside the imposing façade of the Dorchester at quarter to one that morning. It was late, and so there was no waiting doorman to take Cole’s bag, which was good, all things considered. The driver was duly paid, and Cole made towards the huge gilded entrance, veering away as he saw the taxi pull away back into the steady stream of traffic.
Instead, he pulled his collar up against the icy wind and started to trudge towards Oxford Street, on his way to the Devonshire. It would take no more than half an hour, he figured, and so he was assured of a good night’s sleep. Because even five hours was considered a good night’s sleep on operations; and until Cole was safely at home with his family, he still considered himself to be very much involved in his mission.
Cole finally slipped into bed a short time after three in the morning. He stretched out underneath the warm, luxurious sheets, his body aching from the thousands of miles he had travelled in the last forty-eight hours, and the debilitating after-effects of adrenaline from the short but crucial period of action.
He had not walked straight to the Devonshire, but had followed a circuitous route instead. By walking in a certain unpredictable pattern, by taking unlikely diversions across the London underground, and by generally using anything but the easy route, he would be able to pick up on any surveillance that might be watching him. It was a habit born out of years of experience.
As he had approached Oxford Street, he decided that he would need a change of clothes for the meeting later that morning. On reflection, Cole also decided that it would be prudent to destroy the clothes he was wearing. After all, there was no point walking around covered in potential DNA evidence.
He therefore entered a clothing store on Oxford Street at one o’clock that morning, selecting a light blue cotton shirt, conservative grey business suit, a plain silk tie, and new underwear. From the camping store a few doors up, he also purchased some more casual travelling clothes and trekking boots, and he then obtained some leather brogues and a new leather holdall from a gentlemen’s outfitters just a few minutes walk away. Not for the first time, he was grateful for the twenty-four hour culture that this country had finally embraced.
At half past one, he descended the steps of the Tottenham Court Road tube station, and changed into his new casual clothes in the cubicle of the public toilets. He stuffed his old clothes and shoes into his original holdall and transferred his documents to the new one. He then put his suit and other clothes into the new bag, and all the shop’s plastic packaging into the old one. Satisfied, he caught the next Northern Line train to Warren Street.
After ascending to street level once again, Cole strolled easily for five minutes, before heading down one of the dark alleys off Great Portland Street, where he set fire to his old holdall and all its contents. He watched it burn, until all that was left inside the skeletal carcass of the holdall was a large pile of ash. He scattered the ashes over the rain-slicked street of the back-alley, then threw the useless, burnt leather bag into a nearby wheelie bin.
He had then continued, via Portland Place, on to the Devonshire Hotel in Devonshire Street, confident that he had not been followed. After a quick check-in he had gone up to his room, where he had indulged in a wonderfully long, hot bath before crawling into bed.
Stretching complete, Cole reached over to set his alarm for half past six, rolled back, and was asleep.
Sarah noticed the tiny pinprick of light as she stared out to sea. Ordinarily she would have thought nothing of it. After the coded message she had received from Mark though, her paranoia level had increased considerably.
Not that there was anything unduly worrying about the content of the message – he had merely been informing her that he would be delayed by a couple of days.
However, Mark had always stressed that whenever there was a deviavtion from the norm, precautions should always be taken. And so here she was, Ben and Amy fast asleep in bed, staring out across the Caribbean and looking for anything out of the ordinary. And the light out at sea, so late at night, fell directly into that category.
It was certainly worthy of further investigation, she decided.
Dan Albright didn’t like the fact that the yacht’s sidelights were on, but those were the orders from the harbour-master, and it would be even more trouble to get into a conflict with him. Because the last thing Albright wanted to do was to bring any untoward attention down on him and his men.
Besides, he didn’t expect Sarah Cole or her children to notice their presence. Not until it was too late.
Cole strolled down the street towards the safe house, the air crisp and cold. There was a fresh layer of snow covering the road, although the snow was no longer falling. In fact, there were no clouds in the sky at all as far as Cole could make out, and the sun was trying its best to pierce the icy atmosphere. But despite its efforts, it was still bitterly cold, and Cole observed how his breath crystallised as he exhaled. The snow would soon turn to ice, he knew, and then just the very act of walking would become somewhat treacherous in his leather-soled brogues. He was glad he’d be able to change into his new boots after the meeting.
The small terraced street was a quiet place, running off a much larger and busier road nearer to the park. It held long stretches of large, four-storey Georgian town houses on both sides, and seemed well cared for. It was certainly an affluent area, and Cole wondered for how long the CIA had kept a safe house here. He felt certain that it would have been several decades at least, as current property prices would now scare off government purchase of such a site, even
with
the generous black budgets currently enjoyed by the US intelligence services.
Such safe houses were remnants of the transatlantic ‘special relationship’ enjoyed between the US and the UK and, although press reports indicated that it wasn’t what it once was, the intelligence community was still pretty tight. In this day and age, with terrorism a global concern, it had to be. And so the British government was only too happy for the American intelligence services to have their own stations within the UK. It allowed the CIA and other US agencies to perform aspects of their work away from the prying eyes of Congress, whilst Britain received reciprocal favours in return.
The street was quiet, perhaps due to the time of year, and Cole could see nothing at all out of the ordinary; which was, he thought ironically, odd in itself. But all in all, he was satisfied with the location. He was sure that his movements were now being monitored by electronic surveillance, but he was not concerned. His appearance was sufficiently different to his file photographs to ensure that a match would not be made. And anyway, he was officially dead – any agents now watching him wouldn’t even
have
access to his file.
He had heard that this was the location for many top-level interviews, from the protracted debriefings of KGB defectors from the Cold War, to the ultra-sensitive handling of politicians escaping the despotic regime of modern-day North Korea. Cole knew that only preliminary interviews would be held here, before the individuals concerned were spirited away to more secure, remote locations in the Scottish Highlands or Welsh mountains, in conjunction with the British Secret Intelligence Service. Nevertheless, if such stories were to be believed, then some very influential men would have spent at least the first few days of their new lives here behind the thick stone walls.
He was sure that the safe house would be like a fortress.
Sarah knew the location of the binoculars as well as her husband did, and had practised using them on more than one occasion, under his exacting instruction. She now carried them silently through the house, slipping upstairs to the top floor, where she entered a small cloakroom. She pushed her way through to the back, lying down prone on the floor. Reaching forward, Sarah pulled a small wooden slat to one side, leaving a six-inch by three-inch gap.
The opening gave her a view directly out of the wall of the house, and it was just big enough for the lens of the binoculars to fit into. Remembering precisely how Mark had demonstrated their use, she turned on the night-vision device and trained it out to sea. The glow was a strange, eerie green that took her a few moments to get used to. But when she did, it took her only a short while longer to locate the yacht she’d spotted earlier.
So,
she thought to herself,
I was right. It’s still there.
Focussing the binoculars, she zoomed in on the vessel. Even with the impressive night-vision facility, it was still hard to make out details at this distance – Sarah estimated it was at least six kilometres out from shore. But she was patient, and waited. And waited. Until, finally, she saw movement. What looked like a tall blond man came out from below deck and walked to the bow, kneeling down as he got to an indistinct mound on the floor. The man knelt, his hand going down to touch it.
The mound moved under the blond man’s touch.
Oh no
, thought Sarah as she saw what the mound really was, the reality of the situation dawning. She then focussed her high-powered lenses, first of all on the blond man’s face, and then on that of the other man. Previously hidden under a dark blanket, the second man had been using his own night-vision scope to keep a quiet eye on the Cole household.
This wasn’t just out of the ordinary; this was a direct threat to her and her children.
She breathed deeply. Something would have to be done.