Black Ops: The 12th Spider Shepherd Thriller (19 page)

‘Ben is our explosives and IED expert,’ said Button, by way of introduction. ‘I’ve asked him to give you a briefing, basically everything a contract killer needs to know about explosives and their use.’

McDowall nodded enthusiastically. ‘I’m just back from the CIA’s testing facility in Langley, Virginia, and have some stuff that really is hot off the presses,’ he said. ‘I’m planning to go through some circuit diagrams before we get on to the practical work. You might want to think about taking notes. Some of the circuits are quite complex.’

‘That’s okay. I’ve got a photographic memory.’

‘Eidetic? Me too.’ He frowned and pushed his glasses higher up his nose. ‘So why didn’t you pursue an academic career?’

Shepherd grinned. ‘That’s a very good question.’

H
arper met O’Brien and Walsh at breakfast. Over perfectly cooked eggs Benedict he explained what the two men needed to do. He kept his instructions terse and to the point.

‘You should return to Ireland or wherever it is that you base yourselves but be ready to fly to Paris at a few hours’ notice. You will be met on arrival at Charles de Gaulle airport and given further instructions. When you reach the place where the items are stored, you will have an opportunity to inspect them and satisfy yourself about their quality. The items will then be placed among some equipment in appropriately labelled crates and once payment has been handed over, you can take them away. For an extra payment I can also arrange for them to be delivered to the docks at a suitable port, and loaded on to a ship for Dun Laoghaire or any other port you may care to nominate. You’ll need to handle the Irish end, customs-wise.’

Walsh shook his head. ‘We’ll be making our own arrangements for shipping. We don’t want to be handing our money over to you and then arriving at the docks to find that by an amazing coincidence someone’s tipped off the gentlemen in uniform, now do we?’

‘Suit yourself,’ Harper said. ‘So much the better, it saves me the trouble and expense of arranging the shipping myself.’

After breakfast, Harper settled his bill with one of the credit cards Button had given him, then flew to Berlin where he used the credit card again to buy a top-of-the-range BMW motorcycle. He rode to a small town in what had been the heartlands of the DDR – the German Democratic Republic in the Communist era – and booked himself into a Gasthaus. He phoned Zelda Hoffmann and arranged to meet her at ten o’clock that night.

Zelda was in her late forties, but still a glamorous woman, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed German stereotype, though half a lifetime of perpetual disappointments had etched stress lines into her face and forehead. A former Stasi agent in Communist East Germany, even though more than twenty years had passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall, she still burned with anger that all her hopes of a future in the best seats in the house had disappeared with the collapse of Communism. Her father had been a senior figure in the Stasi and East German politics, and Erich Honecker, the Leader of the DDR, had attended her naming ceremony when she was a child. Zelda had remained a friend of his right up until his escape to Russia when the brutal apparatus by which he maintained his iron control of his state began to crumble and topple down around his ears.

Harper knew Zelda of old and had obtained weapons from her before for below-the-radar jobs in Eastern Europe. She had helped the Stasi stash weapons away after the fall of the Berlin Wall, hiding them before the West German Bundeswehr could arrive to claim them, in the hope that one day the East would rise again. According to Zelda, although the Bundeswehr had found some of the Stasi caches, many others remained undiscovered: an arsenal not merely of small arms and ammunition, but of heavy machine guns, mortars, grenades and rocket launchers as well. ‘If we could have dug holes big enough to bury tanks we would have done that too,’ she had once boasted. She also had considerable influence among other disaffected apparatchiks from the old regime and could produce a number of hard-faced former Stasi men to act as observers, bodyguards or thugs as the situation demanded.

He had already phoned her from Monaco and explained the basics of what he wanted, but he went through it in more detail as he sat with her at a table in a bar near the town’s derelict steelworks.

‘I’ll need some people, Zelda,’ Harper said, ‘but more important, in addition to the weapons I’ve already told you about, I’m going to need something a bit more specialised. Can you still get access to those Katyushas?’

She glanced around the bar and then lowered her voice, a needless precaution since it was deserted apart from them. The owner was in the back room, where the flicker of a TV screen and the sound of an over-excited commentator showed he was watching football. ‘I can do that,’ she said. ‘Among the weapons I helped to hide, there was a stock of Katyushas. We sealed them in air- and watertight containers.’ She shot him a crafty look, involuntarily licking her lips as she did so. ‘But they are very precious to us.’

Harper gave a broad smile. ‘Don’t worry about the price. Money’s no object. My clients are eager to buy some if all goes well on our first deal, but they may wish to examine one first. Would that create problems for you?’

She laughed. ‘There are no problems that cannot be solved by goodwill and American dollars.’

‘Then we’re in business,’ Harper said. ‘So how many American dollars will it take to buy a Katyusha?’

‘That’s negotiable.’

‘I was thinking a hundred thousand.’

‘And I was thinking we need to negotiate.’

He grinned and placed a hand on her arm. ‘Do you trust me?’

She held his gaze, trying to read his expression and then gave a slight shrug of her shoulders. ‘Of course. We go back a long way, Lex.’

‘How about this? I’ll pay you seventy-five per cent of the money I get from my clients, with payment to be made immediately after they take delivery of the rockets. You will be responsible for organising an inspection of the rockets if necessary and for delivery from wherever they are stored to a location that we shall agree between us, but probably to the south or south-west of Berlin. I will sort out the arrangements for the handover. Deal?’ He held out his hand.

She hesitated, then nodded. ‘Deal. But in Germany we seal a deal with a kiss, not a handshake.’

It was not a German custom that Harper had come across before, but she was still a good-looking woman, so it would be no hardship to humour her. He leaned forward and kissed her. At once her arm snaked around his neck and she kissed him back passionately, sliding her tongue into his mouth.

‘Hold on, Zelda,’ he said, gently disengaging himself. ‘Let’s save the celebrations for when the deal is complete!’

She shrugged. ‘If you say so.’

‘Just a couple more things. I will need a semi-automatic pistol, a shoulder holster and a dozen magazines of 7.62 short ammunition for myself.’

‘You’re expecting trouble?’

‘I’m always expecting trouble. That way I’m fully prepared to deal with it if it arises. I’ll also need a range of other weapons – not for sale, just as window dressing.’

Zelda gave him a puzzled smile. ‘What is this window dressing?’

‘It’s like when department stores put things in the window to lure in the customers. So as well as the weapons you’re already supplying, I’m going to need some more things for show – a few handguns, more AK-47s, machine guns, RPGs, mines and maybe a mortar or two. I don’t want my clients thinking that they’re the only ones I’ve got. I’ll give them back, unused, when the show’s over. And pay you a rental fee too, say ten thousand dollars.’

‘All right.’ She paused, moistening her lips with the tip of her tongue.

‘Tomorrow?’

She laughed. ‘Of course not. But the day after, perhaps. Now are you sure there’s nothing else I can do for you?’

For a moment he was tempted but he shook his head. ‘Thanks, Zelda, but let’s keep it strictly business for now, shall we?’

‘For now, yes. And afterwards?’

He smiled. ‘And afterwards, who knows?’ He winked and walked out to get his bike.

S
hepherd picked Faith Savill-Smith up outside Bond Street Tube station. She looked considerably more glamorous than when he’d met her in Islington Police Station. She was wearing a white Chanel jacket over a pale green dress cut low at the front, impossibly high heels, and had a dark green Chanel handbag over her shoulder.

‘Wow, did Charlie let you put the outfit on expenses?’ he asked as she climbed into the BMW.

At first she didn’t understand what he meant, then she laughed and tossed her hair. ‘No, this is all mine,’ she said.

‘Does Charlie get you to do stuff like this often?’

‘Stuff?’

‘Ride shotgun like this?’

She smiled, but he figured he’d struck a nerve by the way her eyes tightened a fraction. ‘She does, actually.’ She glanced down at her impressive cleavage. ‘And she always insists that I have the twins on show.’

‘Insists?’

‘Well, hints.’

‘What did she tell you about tonight?’

‘Just that I’m to be your eye candy, that you’re getting close to a bad guy. I’m to look pretty and say as little as possible.’

‘That sounds about right,’ said Shepherd. ‘My cover name is Frederick Olsen. Try not to use my name; call me honey or babe or something affectionate. I’ll introduce you as Katy. Make eye contact with everyone but not so much as to attract their attention.’ He grinned. ‘Though I think the twins will probably attract enough attention on their own.’

‘They do tend to hog the limelight,’ she said, doing a little shimmy for him that took his attention from the road for a few seconds more than was safe.

‘We’ll sit at the bar and have a drink. At some point a guy called Neil will come over and seem surprised to see me. We’ll make small talk, he’ll introduce me to the guy he’s with, then I’ll make my excuses and leave. You just follow my lead.’

He found a parking spot across the road from the hotel. The doorman cast an admiring glance at the twins as Shepherd followed Faith inside and walked with her across reception to the bar.

They sat on stools and Shepherd asked her what she wanted to drink.

‘A Bellini would hit the spot.’

Shepherd nodded at a barman dressed all in black and ordered her cocktail and a Jameson and soda for himself. While the barman was making the Bellini and casting sly looks at the twins, Shepherd took a quick look around the bar. Murray was sitting at a table by the window with a large black man with a booming laugh that echoed around the bar each time he let it rip. There was a bottle of Cristal champagne in an ice bucket next to the table and two corks which suggested they were already well into their second. A young blonde girl with a figure to rival Savill-Smith’s was sitting next to Owolade and rubbing the back of his neck. Owolade was deep in conversation with Murray, a conversation that was punctuated by him slapping the table and laughing loudly.

Their drinks arrived and Shepherd and Savill-Smith made small talk for about fifteen minutes before Shepherd felt a hand on his shoulder.

‘Bloody hell, what are you doing in London?’

Shepherd turned, faked surprise, then slid off his stool and hugged Murray. ‘Neil, wow, long time no see.’

Shepherd introduced Savill-Smith as Katy and the two men chatted about old times for a couple of minutes before Murray said he wanted to introduce him to the man he was drinking with. He put his arm around Shepherd’s shoulder as they went over to his table.

‘Timmy, I want to introduce you to an old friend, Frederik Olsen. We go back a long way.’

Owolade didn’t get up but extended a gold-ring-encrusted hand that Shepherd shook. ‘You want a drink, Freddie?’ he asked.

‘I’m never one to turn down Cristal, but we’re going to have to love you and leave you,’ he said. He patted Murray on the back. ‘I’ve got a table booked at Scott’s. But we should catch up sometime, lots to talk about.’ He shook hands with Murray, nodded at Owolade, and put his arm around Savill-Smith as he guided her to the door.

‘Do you really have a table booked at Scott’s?’ she asked as they stepped out on to the pavement.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Deep cover. You have to be prepared to follow through.’

‘So we’re going to eat at Scott’s on expenses?’

‘Do you have a problem with that?’

She laughed. ‘It’s one of my favourite restaurants, so no, no problem at all.’

H
arper’s team had located a suitable building for the next phase of the operation: a small warehouse in a grim East German rust-belt town a few hours’ drive from Berlin. The warehouse was in a steep, winding side street, its cobbled surface covered in ice and semi-frozen slush. Most of the surrounding buildings were boarded up or derelict and the few people braving the biting east wind hurried past without a second look, their chins sunk into their coats. Their faces looked as grey and poor as the town they lived in. While Billy Big made a brew, Billy Whisper and Maggie May showed Harper round the building. Hansfree stayed hunched over his computer. It looked as if the warehouse had stood empty since the Berlin Wall came down and every surface was thickly carpeted with dust. In the Communist era the warehouse must have been the office and store place for some arm of the government or the Party because fading propaganda posters still lined the walls. A sun-bleached image of a demonic American eagle with nuclear missiles for talons menacing a few blonde Brunhildes hung next to a photograph of some East German official handing a beaming worker the keys to a new car.

Harper laughed. ‘First prize one Trabant, second prize two Trabants!’

At the front of the building, accessed by a door opening on to the street, was a small office, no more than a few metres square, with shelves and rusting filing cabinets lining the walls. The drawers sagged open and a mess of spilled, yellowing papers was scattered across the floor.

‘Like the Marie Celeste, only dustier,’ Harper said.

‘But it’ll do?’ Billy Whisper asked, in a voice so low he could have been talking to himself.

‘It’ll do,’ Harper said. He grinned. ‘Actually it’s perfect.’