Black Ops: The 12th Spider Shepherd Thriller (8 page)

The office was lined with filing cabinets and volumes of tax law. There were four desks, one in each corner of the room, and a door leading to another office. Button went through the second door and sat at a high-backed executive chair behind a large oak desk. ‘I know you’re never comfortable in Thames House,’ she said.

‘It’s not about being comfortable, it’s about being recognised,’ he said as he sat on one of the two wooden chairs on his side of the desk. ‘You never know who’s going to see you coming and going. And as I’m undercover a lot of the time it’s better I don’t get seen by the staff there.’

‘I absolutely understand,’ said Button. ‘And I prefer to get out of the office myself.’ She looked around and smiled. ‘Of course, all I’ve done is swap one office for another. I would have suggested a nice lunch but of course then we wouldn’t be able to talk freely. So, job well done yesterday.’

Shepherd shrugged. ‘I’m not sure that allowing a terrorist incident to go ahead counts as a job well done.’

‘There were no indications that it was about to kick off; we were still at the intel-gathering phase,’ she said. ‘Nothing they had done or said suggested that they were ready to move.’

‘Maybe we missed something.’

‘Maybe we did. But at the end of the day we stopped them and I think we both know it could have been so much worse,’ she said. ‘We have a dozen walking wounded and four in intensive care. But at the end of the day no one died, and that’s down to you.’

‘Four people died,’ said Shepherd. ‘And I killed two of them.’

‘Let me rephrase that then,’ said Button. ‘No one who matters died. I hope you’re not shedding any tears over four dead jihadists.’

‘I’m not.’

‘I’ll happily arrange sessions with Caroline Stockmann if you want,’ she said. ‘You’re almost due your biannual psyche evaluation anyway.’

Shepherd shook his head. ‘I’m fine. What about the one who’s still alive?’

‘Under armed guard in University College Hospital. As soon as he can be moved he’ll be in Belmarsh and we’ll start questioning him. But as you know, these days we’re not allowed to raise our voices or hurt their feelings, so I doubt he’ll say much.’

‘Do we know who they are? I recognised Khalaf but I’ve no idea who the other one was. He was a totally new face to me.’

‘The one still alive is Mahmud, the Somalian from Ealing. The dead ones are cleanskins, not known to us and, so far as we know, have never been abroad.’

‘How did we miss them?’ asked Shepherd. A cleanskin was someone not known to the security services, a terrorist who had somehow managed to stay beneath the radar.

‘We think the second guy you took out was the guy that Mahmud and Khalaf were talking to online. We’ve got our technical boys working on his phone as we speak. So Khalaf and Mahmud spoke to the third guy, the one you took out, and the third guy spoke to the cleanskins. They’re copying the terrorist cell model that the IRA used so well during the Troubles.’

‘We were lucky,’ said Shepherd.

‘We have to be,’ said Button. ‘There are dozens of cells planning similar atrocities every day of the week across the UK. We can be as professional as we want but at the end of the day sometimes it comes down to luck. If you hadn’t been on surveillance yesterday it could have all gone down very differently. Still, as I said, no civilians were killed, four of the jihadists are dead and one is in custody, so it’s drinks all round.’

Shepherd shrugged. ‘I guess so.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘I don’t understand why they do it, these guys. Why attack civilians when there are so many high-profile targets? Track down Tony Blair and hack him to death – that I could understand. Go for the politicians. Go for the army, that I understand. But why attack civilians? I just don’t get it.’

‘The clue’s in the name,’ she said. ‘They’re terrorists. It’s about inspiring terror. If they kill a soldier in uniform then the public can convince themselves that it won’t happen to them. But a truly random attack scares everyone.’

‘But achieves nothing. It makes no sense to me. I don’t think it ever will. What do they want? Sharia law? The UK turned into an Islamic state? That’s never going to happen. Troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan? They’ve got that. At least with the IRA you know what they wanted. A united Ireland. This lot? It’s like they just want to hurt people.’ He sipped his coffee and shrugged. ‘I’m overthinking it, right?’

‘There’s no easy answer,’ said Button. ‘That’s the problem. All we can do is be vigilant.’

‘Well you say that, Charlie, but maybe we should stop British citizens from flying into these war zones because they’re sure as hell not going as tourists. They’re going to be trained and this is what happens when they get back.’

‘They hadn’t all been to Syria, Spider. And so far as we know, none of them had been for training in Pakistan. There’s something else at work here and frankly I’m as confused about it all as you are.’ She forced a smile. ‘Still, ours not to reason why.’ She swung her briefcase up on to the table. ‘Anyway, there’s a job that requires your undercover talents in a more traditional area,’ she said. She opened her briefcase, took out a file and pushed a photograph across the table towards him. It was a black and white surveillance picture, taken with a long lens. A small man, balding and with round-lensed spectacles, was climbing into the back of a limousine. Another man, taller and wearing a dark coat, was holding an umbrella over the man to keep off the rain.

‘This is Max Jansen. His daughter was on Malaysia Airlines Flight Seventeen.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah. She was eighteen and was flying to Bali with a couple of friends for a gap year. They were going to work for an animal charity.’

Shepherd grimaced. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 had been shot down in the sky above the Ukraine–Russia border in July 2014, killing all 298 passengers and crew. Shepherd remembered seeing television footage of the aftermath of the crash near Torez in the Ukraine. It was heartbreaking seeing the personal belongings scattered among the wreckage, the larger body parts covered by sheets. The Ukrainian forces refused to let air crash investigators near the site but seemed to have no problem in allowing Ukrainian peasants to sift through the wreckage looking for valuables.

‘Jansen blames Putin for the attack. He holds him personally responsible.’

‘Sounds reasonable,’ said Shepherd. It was generally accepted that the passenger plane had been shot down by pro-Russian separatists using a Buk surface-to-air missile. The Russians had blamed the Ukraine forces for the attack, but the Ukrainian government claimed the missile had been launched by Russian troops under orders from the Russian government. Shepherd tended to believe the Ukrainians.

‘Jansen was involved with a Dutch campaign to force the Russians to accept responsibility for the incident, but he recently fell out with them,’ said Button. ‘According to the AIVD, Jansen has decided to take matters into his own hands.’

‘In what way?’ The AIVD was the Algemene Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdienst, which translated as the General Intelligence and Security Service, the Dutch equivalent of MI5.

‘He wants to hire an assassin to take out Putin.’

Shepherd laughed out loud. ‘Oh come on, he’s delusional.’

‘He’s got the money. He’s got all the money he needs. He set up a software company that Microsoft paid millions for in the nineties and he used that to launch a video games and app developer that is now one of the biggest companies in Holland.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘You won’t have heard of most of the really rich,’ said Button. ‘Not the smart ones, anyway. They keep a low profile. You wouldn’t find Jansen buying a football club or building a super yacht. But trust me, he’s worth billions. And he’s in the market for a contract killer.’

Shepherd smiled and shook his head. ‘You don’t take out a man like Putin with a contract killer,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t work like that. He’s better protected than the US President.’

‘US presidents have been shot,’ said Button.

‘And the Secret Service has learned lessons from it. But Putin is …’ He shrugged. ‘He’s untouchable. He knows how hated he is and he does what’s necessary to make sure no one dangerous gets anywhere near him. He and the rest of the men who run Russia are protected by the Federal Protective Service. There are thirty thousand men and women in the FPS and their only mission is to protect Putin and about thirty others. In contrast there are about five thousand in the American Secret Service and they have to protect the president and the vice-president and their families, every former president and their families, plus visiting heads of state. Literally hundreds of people. And they have to deal with currency counterfeiting. But it’s not just about the numbers, Charlie. Putin runs Russia with an iron fist in a steel glove. A hired killer can’t just ride into Moscow and take a pot shot at him. I’d say he’s probably the best protected man in the world.’

‘Putin’s coming to London next month,’ said Button. ‘It’s a long-standing fixture, a meeting with the prime minister.’

‘Ah,’ said Shepherd.

‘There will be an FPS unit with the delegation, of course. But slimmed down from what he’s used to, and unarmed of course.’

‘If the threat is real, cancel the visit.’

‘The threat is real, but cancellation isn’t an option. How would it look if we had to admit that we couldn’t protect a visiting dignitary?’

‘A darn sight better than if a visiting dignitary was assassinated here.’

Button flashed him a cold smile. ‘We’re hoping it won’t come to that, obviously. Holland isn’t exactly choc-a-bloc with assassins, so he’s looking further afield.’

‘Looking how, exactly? Advertising on Craigslist?’

Button didn’t bother smiling this time. ‘He’s using a middleman in Amsterdam. Guy by the name of Lucas Smit.’ She handed him another photograph, this of a slightly plump man in his forties with sandy hair. ‘Smit’s an underworld fixer. He’s been asking around in Berlin and Paris and recently he approached a contract killer in London who apparently turned the job down.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘Which bit?’

‘The fact that the job was turned down.’

‘The AIVD have a surveillance team on Smit. He’s very careful but someone in London slipped up and left a message on his voicemail, saying they weren’t interested.’

‘Who turned the job down?’

‘The AIVD don’t know. Smit was calling a throwaway mobile in London. They have a voice but voice-matching hasn’t come up with anything.’

Shepherd exhaled slowly. ‘There’s not many would take on a job like that,’ he said. ‘There’d be a manhunt like there’s never been before.’

‘It would be a retirement job,’ said Button. ‘A last hurrah.’

‘It’s all very short notice, though.’

Button gave him another photograph. A man in his early thirties, square-jawed and with slabs of white teeth that suggested American dentistry. ‘Robert Tyler. Former Delta Force. Went private a few years ago, initially for a US black company but for the last two years has been totally freelance, working for guys like Smit. We think he accepted the Putin contract six months ago but he was killed last week.’

‘By the Russians?’

‘We don’t know. The cops found his body in a house in Queens. Two shots to the chest, one to the face. No forensics. It looks like a professional hit.’

‘Getting killed is an occupational hazard, it goes with the job. Do the Russians know that there’s a contract out on Putin?’

‘If they do, we didn’t tell them.’

‘But they could have found out on their own and taken care of it.’

‘True. But then wouldn’t you have expected them to have taken out Smit as well? Or cancelled Putin’s visit?’

‘You could always ask them,’ said Shepherd.

‘I assume you’re joking,’ said Button. ‘We’re not in the business of sharing intel with the Russians, and vice versa. We’re not even sure that Tyler was connected to the Putin contract. It’s purely circumstantial. But the facts are that immediately after Tyler’s death, Smit went into overdrive.’

‘Did this Smit mention a number?’

Button shook her head. ‘He’s far too careful to be caught discussing money but we’re assuming millions.’

‘Tens of, I would have thought. And even then …’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t see contractors lining up to take the job. You’d get the Walter Mittys and the chancers, the guys trying to make a name for themselves, but the real professionals would see too much downside.’

‘AIVD want us to come up with someone,’ said Button quietly.

‘I’d already figured that out,’ said Shepherd. He smiled. ‘But come on, what would my way in be? I call up Smit and say that I’ve heard he’s looking for an assassin?’

‘There’s a network of middlemen like Smit right across Europe, and beyond. I think we can get you into the loop.’

‘Charlie, at that level it’s all word of mouth. You need to know someone who knows someone who knows someone.’

‘We think we have a way in. There’s a guy in custody in Ras al-Khaimah, in the Emirates, who was caught trying to kill a minor royal. The prince had fallen out with another prince and it all got nasty. The guy they caught is behind half a dozen high-profile kills over the past ten years. He’s never been identified, no one knows what he looks like. You become him.’

‘That’s hellish risky. I won’t know who knows him.’

‘No one knows him. And certainly Smit doesn’t, and that’s all that matters.’

‘And how do you get me next to Smit?’

‘A middleman in London who sometimes works for Five.’

‘This is getting very, very messy, Charlie.’

‘It’s a bit complicated, but there’s a logic to it. The killer’s known only as The Dane.’

‘Because he’s from Denmark or because he’s a big dog?’

Button smiled coldly. ‘I know you’re trying to lighten the moment, but this is complicated enough as it is. No, he’s not Danish. At least he doesn’t have a Danish passport. When they caught him in Ras al-Khaimah he had Irish, Canadian and Australian passports. Their police liaised with Interpol and they ran his prints and DNA through all the EU databases but they drew a blank. The passports all had his photographs but different names so no one knows his real name or where he came from.’