The Purple Contract (6 page)

‘Yeah, he’s a failed English MP, so he came up here to sort out the snivelling Scots.’ Al Hendry sneered.

‘The rally’s next Saturday,’ Moloney mused. ‘So he’ll be driving up that morning, for sure.’

‘Get a hold of him on the way, you reckon?’ Paul Hendry suggested.

‘Could be. Or maybe get at him at home before he leaves. The night before?’

‘Largs is a nice quiet place,’ agreed Al. ‘Could do worse.’

‘Anyone know exactly where he lives?’ John MacKenzie was glad the conversation had eased off outright murder.

Al shrugged his heavy shoulders. ‘Easy enough to find out, I’ve a cousin who works in the Labour Party offices. She can check it easily enough. Or it’s likely to be on the Net. Has Largs got a website?’

‘Sure to have,’ Moloney said.

‘We’ll find the son-of-a-bitch, don’t worry,’ said Al Hendry.

'No'.

Hollis lifted the holdall for inspection and smiled into the green eyes. Baggage check. 'Just this.'

'Hand luggage only, Oslo one-way,’ she said primly. ‘Thank you, sir, gate number three.'

Mike Hollis took the ticket folder and nodded his thanks. There were two charter aircraft unloading and the terminal building in Edinburgh was crowded. Although he hadn't, couldn't have, planned it that way, he was pleased. He much preferred the anonymity of crowds. Just another anonymous traveller, one more bored commuter, one more face.

Triple-glazed windows looked out onto the apron, and beyond it the main runway. A Boeing 737 carrying the British Airways emblem on the tail shrieked into reverse-thrust practically as soon as the nose wheel made contact with the ground. London shuttle, late again. Welcome home, Mike.

'Ticket please. Thank you. Put your bag on the conveyor-belt, sir and collect it at the other side.' Damned X-ray machines were everywhere these days.

Sixteen years in the past, he had lived in this ancient city, with it's magnificent architecture and horrendous traffic jams. It had never lost its attraction for him. The early years in London in the company of Dave Jordan had made him a lot of friends and a lot of contacts. But initially he had been a naive youngster who didn't really understand what he had gotten himself into.

SAS.

Tail fin of the blue and white DC9, SAS; Scandinavian Airlines. 'Hello.' Bright smile at the top of the steps. Blue eyes this time, tall with blonde hair above the neat uniform, very Nordic, yes. The aircraft was half-empty and Hollis had a window seat on the starboard side, aft of the wing. The holdall wouldn't fit under the seat so he stuffed it in the locker above his head and pulled out the newspaper he had bought at the kiosk.

There had been no shortage of employment for a young man with a chip on his shoulder, but it hadn't been what he had expected. He had expected donkey work; fetching and carrying, that sort of thing. But street-wise “businessmen” knew a good thing when they saw it. In their strata of society there was always a demand for a good minder, bodyguard. They knew his history of course: US Marines, very fit, intelligent, trained in unarmed combat and a wide variety of small-arms. Broke.

The DC9 climbed out over the city of Edinburgh and turned north-east, the wheels rumbling up into the wings, flaps retracting. It continued up through the cloud layer to its cruising height of 9,000 metres under a crystal-blue sky.

Within nine months the young Hollis saw that his financial worries were at least receding. It wasn’t what he would have planned, or necessarily wanted, but that was life. He was effectively, if not officially, self-employed, hiring his services out to the highest bidder, and as his reputation spread the bids got higher …

'Would you like something to drink, sir?' Same dazzling smile, different girl.

'No.'

'We'll be landing in about twenty minutes.'

'Okay, thanks.' The water far below showed briefly through a gap in the heavy clouds, gray and uneven, another wonderful day down there in the North Sea.

One day he became involved, albeit involuntarily, in a gangland shootout. Pistols and sawn-off shotguns everywhere. Rivalry in West End prostitution had finally boiled over into open warfare. It was necessarily brief, and although Hollis had taken shotgun pellets in the arm and shoulder protecting his employer, he still managed to get in three shots with his 9 mm Glock. When the authorities came to clean up the mess they found three dead and four injured. The four despatched to hospital in the company of police officers all had shotgun wounds. The three corpses had all died by a single 9 mm round from a handgun …

'Fasten your seatbelts, please.' Much lower now, moving over fields and roads, one of them clearly a motorway with heavy traffic moving both ways. Vibration began as the wheels came down out of their housings, and a low whine was audible from the wings where the flaps were sliding out and down. The aircraft tilted slightly, and then again more sharply as the pilot lined up with the runway centreline.

The first offer had not been long in coming; ability was respected in these circles and the sort of talent represented by Michael Hollis was certainly not going to be ignored.

Naturally Hollis had refused.

'You think I'm some sort of fuckin' psychopath or somethin'?' he had ground out between his teeth. 'No way!'

But the offers kept coming, and to a young man in his late-twenties, permanently short of money and used to such trappings of luxury as came with his employment by drug traffickers and bank robbers, the sums being dangled in front of him were mouth-watering. It took them over a year to change his mind, and then they had to resort to a struck-off doctor who had expensive requirements for white powder and teenage boys in equal proportions. He had spent 20 years teaching psychology to bored students and didn't really find the rather niaive Mike Hollis much of a challenge. Youthful principals and family morals were easily turned around with devastating logic and powerfully reasoned argument.

Still, Hollis had been a physical and mental wreck for a week following his first paid killing. What brought him out of it in fact was the repeated phone calls from his bank manager suggesting suitable ways to invest his “windfall”. A stone lighter and ten thousand pounds richer he stepped forth into a world changed forever.

The wheels squeaked on the concrete and reverse-thrust pressed Hollis into his seatbelt as the aircraft slowed rapidly, turning off onto a taxiway and finally coming to rest in its allocated slot.

Two more years and he found it expedient to quit the pressures of the capitol. At the urging of a Scottish girlfriend he bought the pair of them a house in Edinburgh. Eventually she moved back to London but Hollis stayed, thoroughly captivated by the sheer elegance of the place. He moved house regularly as a matter of routine security but never strayed far from the city.

By then he could pick and choose from the offers which appeared out of the blue, and was frequently astonished at the way his reputation quickly spread far beyond the boundaries of his adopted homeland. In recent years he had found it convenient to only accept commissions outside the UK; it was little enough, but it helped to have a base where he was not being actively sought by the security agencies. Although technically murder investigations were never declared closed until an arrest had been made.

And so the years had passed, almost unnoticed. Nowadays his fees were so high that contracts were infrequent. But that wasn't a problem; there were ample funds tucked away in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. Now in his late-forties, Mike Hollis had just about convinced himself it was time to call it a day.

'What is the purpose of your visit to Norway?'

'Business meeting.'

'Enjoy your stay, Mr Sperring.' Another meaningless stamp in a meaningless passport. This, too, was routine security. Gojo had been heard to call it paranoia but Mike Hollis was still alive when many others in his trade were long dead. The Oslo flight had been the first out of Edinburgh after his arrival from Inverness. It took but moments to check the times of the next Amsterdam connection. Fifty-five minutes. He would buy a ticket immediately before departure time, as he had done in Edinburgh. For now, some coffee would be welcome.

It was mid afternoon when Hollis emerged blinking into the bright sunshine from the comparative gloom of Amsterdam's Central Station. The rail link from Schipol was impressively fast, with only three stops, taking just twenty eight minutes to deliver it's cargo of tourists to the delights of the bustling capitol city. Jabbering excitedly in half a dozen languages the crowd seemed to spread out into the streets from the station entrance like a tide, and abruptly were gone: absorbed effortlessly into the thousands already there.

The station taxi's were being rapidly decimated too, but Hollis had been here before. He crossed one of the myriad of bridges into Prins Hendrikkade and walked west for a hundred metres to the cab rank alongside the stretch of dirty water known as Open Haven. 'Rijnhotel on Stadhouserkade.’

At ten o'clock the following morning Mike Hollis left his hotel, walking south past the endless offices, terraced houses and hotels. The rendezvous with his contact was at twelve o'clock, plenty of time. Plenty of time to make sure neither of them had picked up any ticks. At Constantijn Huygens Straat he turned right and counted fifty paces before abruptly turning around and heading back the way he had come. No-one took a sudden interest in a menu or felt the need to tie their shoe laces.

Arriving at Van Lennep Kanaal he turned left along the footpath, walking until he came across a wooden bench with a tarnished metal plaque on it. He sat there for fifteen minutes, checking the environment and paying particular attention to the blue Opel that cruised past twice in the same direction.

Paranoia.

Yes, all right then, so we're getting a bit twitchy in our old age. Better than not
having
an old age.

Another ten minutes but it didn't appear again so he got to his feet, moving along the canal footpath away from the city centre and started counting bridges. By the time the sixth one came up the seemingly endless city had given way to peaceful semi-suburbia and the only noise Hollis could hear came from his own footsteps on the gravel path. This was the appointed place sure enough.

There were still twenty two minutes to wait but that was all right. Hollis eased into the doorway of a disused building that may have once been a storage shed or something similar. One good Scottish gale would surely have flattened it. Finding good shadow cover, he settled down to wait and watch.

Five minutes to twelve and the short man was close enough for Hollis to note his appearance and the newspaper carried in the single-gloved left hand. No-one else was in sight in either direction but Hollis made no move. The newcomer stepped across the grass verge from the path to the roadway. Hollis noted with approval the way in which he casually but carefully checked the area before walking up onto the bridge. At least he wasn't having to deal with a total amateur. He stayed put and waited. Five minutes, ten. Nothing moved anywhere in sight.

Fifteen. The grey haired man, who appeared to be in his fifties was checking his watch impatiently for the seventh time and making up his mind. When he started walking back Hollis did one more check of the area and moved to meet him. 'Is this where I get the bus for the Keukenhof Tour?'

'Only on a Friday. You're late!'

'It's a hard life.'

Len Harrison took in the medium height figure with a scrub of thick sandy coloured hair and the hard, rough-hewn features. The expressionless grey-blue eyes, lined at the corners, watched him steadily, with total equanimity.
Jesus
, thought Harrison,
I wouldn’t like to play poker with this guy
.

'It's a nice day, let's take a walk.'

Harrison noted with interest the American accent. When Manson had told him that the rendezvous was arranged there had been no mention of nationalities. Not that it mattered at all. 'Very well.'

They made no attempt to introduce themselves. Names were irrelevant––neither would have given his real one anyway. Hollis, for his part, was trying to figure whether this contact was just a flunky or his main, possibly sole, employer.
Prospective
employer, he corrected himself.

'Do you know Amsterdam at all?'

Hollis shrugged. 'I've been here a few times.'

'It's a strange mixture of the beautiful and the ugly. I thought of living here some years ago, when my wife was still alive.' Harrison waved a hand in the general direction of the city. 'A remarkably cosmopolitan place, truly European. But then it also has another side, riddled with crime and corruption. You can buy anything here, anything at all.'

'You sure can,' Hollis said, trying to read between the lines.

Privately, Harrison thought his companion probably knew more about the Amsterdam underworld than he himself ever would. Or ever wanted to. 'I represent a group of people who believe very strongly in the concept of a free market. No stupid trading barriers, no petty legislation, no interfering governments shouting dubious morality whenever an election year comes around.'

'There's been a free market in Europe for years. Look how many countries now use the Euro––'

Harrison shook his head. 'These things mean nothing, Mr … um … Smith. The supposedly “free” market is only as free as the authorities want it to be at any given time. The European Community has never achieved true union, despite the best efforts of a few far-sighted people who have spent their lives working towards making Europe a real power in the twenty first century.' Harrison paused for comment, but there was none. He was pleased to see that the other man was listening intently.

Hollis was in fact listening very carefully indeed. He had always been pro-European. Bringing together the various states and territories and forming the United States of America had been a long and tortuous process, but it had conclusively proved the maxim which said that the whole can indeed be greater than the sum of the parts. He could see little reason why a United States of Europe should be any less successful.