Chameleon - A City of London Thriller (43 page)

Doc could have
sworn that she had one less button fastened on her blouse than
she’d had downstairs, and as a result he was treated to a feast of
cleavage as she handed him the mouse.

Quickly and
efficiently Doc set to work, ignoring Eloise’s work and private
files at her request. Barry’s section of the computer was untidy
and disorderly, but it took just a few minutes to locate a number
of hidden files. The first was a large folder called ‘empics’ which
appeared to contain Jpegs and mpegs, while the second was a smaller
file called ‘Personal Info’.

“
Would you
mind bringing me a glass of water, please? I’m parched.” Doc hoped
that Eloise Ter Haar would give him a few moments alone. She
obliged, smiling the whole time.

Doc quickly
cloned Barry Mitchinson’s section of the hard drive, before
deleting Barry’s account. He quickly scanned the personal info
file, and there in the folder he found a neatly typed word file
called passwords and access codes.

“
Why do
people never learn?” he muttered under his breath.

On the sheet
were passwords and pin numbers galore. He found the Britannic
Investments password and pass-code, but his heart missed a beat
when he saw the next line. It contained access details and
passwords for Mitchinson’s workstation at Thames House. This was
the Holy Grail for hackers; an introduction to MI5’s servers. Doc
would be shaking hands, figuratively, with the MI5 server within
the hour. He was going to be famous among his peers.

The download
was complete and the hard drive clean as he heard Eloise ascending
the stairs. He wanted a quick look at his USB drive data to ensure
all the data had transferred correctly, and so he opened the
picture file empics/ling/lounge.

***

When Eloise
entered the room she saw Doc staring at the screen, his mouth
gaping open. On the 21 inch screen was a picture of Eloise Ter Haar
reclining on the sofa in a black basque and fishnet
stockings.

Doc tried to
speak, to apologise, but only a squeak emanated from his lips.
Eloise smiled, put a perfectly manicured finger under his chin and
closed his mouth.

“
I wouldn’t
want anyone to hear about any of this. You know, I am an innocent
victim in all of this.” Doc nodded weakly. He was scared and
excited at the same time, and his excitement was showing through
his thin, cheap suit trousers. Eloise noticed.

“
Obviously I
can make it worth your while for you to keep me out of your
enquiry.”

***

Two hours
later a sweaty and tired Doc sat on the tube train wearing a stupid
grin on his face. He had come to a realisation. He had been wasting
a lot of valuable time with drunken nightclub girls.

Despite the
fact that he had the passwords to an account worth hundreds of
thousands of pounds on the USB drive in his pocket, he was most
looking forward to opening the other ‘empics’ jpegs. Eloise
Mitchinson was all woman.

***

Once Doc had
cloned Barry’s hard drive and sent the account details to Gil, he
had offered to drain the account and share the spoils with her. Gil
had refused, reminding him he was being paid well enough
already.

No, Gillian
Davis wanted her erstwhile boss to suffer, knowing that his ill
gotten gains had been taken by the same employers who were about to
terminate him.

Terminate him
with extreme prejudice, she hoped.

Chapter
6
4

Miles Estate,
Lynchburg, Virginia, Friday 7pm.

Dee had said
her goodbyes to Pete and the two detectives, who were now all
flying back to the UK in time for the weekend, although how
relaxing a weekend it would be for them was open to question. All
three had been angry and frustrated when they left the
hotel.

Steve Post had
told them that he would make it his life’s work to ensure that if
Gillian Miles strayed off the straight and narrow he would be there
to catch her, but the promise seemed more rhetorical that
practical. Steve was determined and well intentioned, but Gillian
Miles had made a life out of evading responsibility for her actions
and now in one rolled up, global confession she had swept all
former criminality under the carpet. What was even more galling for
all concerned was the fact that she had done it with the
cooperation of the authorities.

Now, against
every piece of advice she had been offered – mostly unrequested -
Dee stood leaning against a tree on the Miles Estate waiting for
the Chameleon to make an appearance.

The main house
and grounds were deserted, although a black and white cruiser
patrolled every hour or so. The Senator, his wife and his staff
were at a political rally in Washington DC, to be followed by a
sumptuous state dinner in honour of a visiting head of state,
according to the Washington Post’s internet site.

Steve Post had
been Dee’s most fervent opponent in this regard. He had been
forceful in his language when he told her that, whilst no good
could come from a meeting with Gillian Miles, something bad could
certainly come from it, something very bad. He had even offered to
go ‘off duty’ and offer her some back up, but she refused. His
career would be in tatters if the Senator ever found out the FBI
agent was harassing his daughter.

The weather
was cold, but Dee could bear it. She thought about Josh and home
and West Ham fighting for their Premiership survival tomorrow, but
she knew that she could not leave without confronting Gillian
Miles. So she waited.

***

An old Chevy
Tahoe belonging to the estate pulled up in front of the lodge
concealed behind the main house, and a woman stepped out. In the
half light it was difficult to say whether it was Gillian Miles or
not. The woman came around to the tailgate, opened it and picked up
two bags of shopping. Dee stepped forward out of the shadows and
walked towards the woman, standing in the glow of the courtesy
light.

“
Gillian
Davis, or Gillian Miles?” she enquired. The woman turned to face
her.

“
Yes, can I
help you?” she offered, smiling all the while.

“
I’d like to
talk to you.” Dee was now close to her nemesis.

“
Of course,”
Gillian replied amiably. “Always nice to speak to a fellow Brit.
While you’re here you might as well help me with the shopping.” She
extended both arms, each holding a bag of shopping. Dee took one in
each hand.

The blow came
from nowhere, and if Dee had not been so well trained she would
have been badly injured or killed. Gil’s straight fingers punched
towards the soft part of Dee’s throat. Dee dropped the shopping and
pulled back but the fingers still connected with her windpipe.
Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. Her throat muscles went into spasm
and she could feel panic rising. Dee fell to the floor and rolled
into a protective ball whilst trying to talk herself down from a
full blown panic attack, but the adrenaline was pumping and her
heart was racing. Dee knew from her training that a blow to the
throat like this is only debilitating if you panic. Most people
would instinctively throw both hands to their thorax, leaving their
unprotected body open to a follow up attack. She tried to ignore
her throat and tense her body for action.

She acted just
in time because a heavy kick from winter work boots was aimed at
her midsection. She twisted as the boot landed and it rode up her
side, expending most of its force under her arm. Normally it
wouldn’t do much damage there, but just a few months earlier Dee
had been shot in the very same place. She shrieked with pain but
still pulled her arm in, trapping the foot. Rolling onto her back,
she took the foot with her, and Gil uttered a blasphemy as she lost
her footing.

Realising that
she was going down anyway, Gillian bent her knees and intended to
land on her counterpart’s ribcage, causing some real damage, but by
the time she went down Dee had rolled back under her and had
grabbed her left foot, twisting it painfully. They were both on the
ground now, rolling on the wet grass under a large maple tree. Dee
was still spluttering and trying to catch her breath, but seemed
oblivious to the discomfort as she fought for her life. Gil was
amazed. She had never seen any opponent withstand her favourite
blow and keep on fighting. Gil could feel Dee behind her and so she
swung her elbow around blindly, hoping to hit a vital organ. She
found bone and both girls groaned as Gil’s elbow connected with
Dee’s forearm. Dee’s rash move had left Gil with only one arm to
lift her back into a fighting position.

Dee was
hurting and her breath was still ragged. She needed a quick end to
this fight. She twisted Gil’s left arm, the one with the numb
forearm, and pushed it up her back. The assassin shrieked as Dee
used the hold to lift her to her feet. Realising that at best she
would suffer major tendon damage, and at worst have serious
fractures, Gil rose under her own steam until she was standing
facing the trunk of the maple tree, with Dee behind her.

Dee placed her
right arm across Gil’s throat and released her twisted left arm so
that she could secure the chokehold on Gil with both arms. Dee’s
right wrist was now locked in the crook of her left arm, and she
began to apply the pressure necessary to send her opponent into
unconsciousness.

Gil’s first
reaction would have been to grab for her attacker’s testicles, the
usual way out of a choke hold, but in this case there were none to
squeeze the life out of. She could also have raked her boots down
the other woman’s shins, the second option for escape from a
chokehold, but she guessed that this particular opponent would
accept the pain and carry on. She opened her eyes and saw she had
one more option, which was just as well because she was beginning
to black out. Leaving her whole bodyweight in Dee’s hold, she
kicked up her feet and ran her feet up the tree. As Dee leaned
forward under the weight of the other woman, Gil felt the weight of
the two fighters on her bent legs and she extended both legs to
push her attacker back.

As Gil had
hoped, Dee lost her footing and fell backwards, losing her grip of
the chokehold. She landed flat on her back, with Gil on top of her
and spinning around to initiate another attack. Dee had no way of
knowing that Gil was on the edge of exhaustion as well, and so she
rolled out of the way of a left hook that hit her shoulder instead
of her jaw. Both women managed to clamber to their knees, and Gil
turned away from Dee when she saw a heavy can of chilli lying on
the ground just a couple of feet away. It would make a weapon of
sorts. Dee saw it, too, and as Gill reached out for it Dee fought
dirty. She threw out her open right hand and slipped it under Gil’s
right arm which was reaching for the can. Then, hooking her wrist
around the Chameleons body, she grabbed the other woman’s right
breast and squeezed as hard as she could, pulling the other woman
around to face her. Gil cried out in pain as she was forcefully
turned around to look into the face of Dee Hammond.

She didn’t
have long to look because she caught sight of Dee’s left fist
heading straight into her face. She lifted her head in an attempt
to avoid the punch, but it was too late. She felt a blow to the
chin and everything went black.

***

After taking a
couple of minutes to recover, Dee stood up and looked down at the
sprawling body of Gillian Davis. She was out cold. Dee stumbled
over to the open tailgate of the Chevy Tahoe and sat down on it.
Rummaging around in the shopping, she found a sixteen ounce bottle
of blue liquid that looked like wallpaper stripper but which was in
fact Gatorade. Dee slugged it down in seconds and waited for the
caffeine and glucose to hit.

Fifteen
minutes later Gil Davis began to rouse herself. She ached all over,
and suddenly unconsciousness seemed an attractive option. She was
lying on something soft. Was it a cushion of some kind? When she
opened her eyes she was lying on the sofa.

Dee was busy
in the kitchen when she saw signs of Gil stirring. She grabbed
something from the countertop and crossed over to the
sofa.

“
Here, hold
this against your jaw. It’ll prevent it going stiff.” She held out
a Ziploc bag filled with ice from the icebox. Gil did as she was
told and massaged her right breast.

“
You fight
dirty,” she said, her voice filled with irony, or so Dee chose to
believe.

“
And you
fight like a girl,” Dee replied. Gil almost laughed, but it turned
into a groan and a cough. “I only came to talk,” Dee
added.

“
I thought
Five might have sent you to kill me. They’ve tried twice already.”
Gil’s tone was measured and calm. Dee walked over to the counter
where the shopping had all been unpacked and picked up a
tray.

“
I’ve made us
some tea,” she announced, then placed the tray on the coffee table
and gently moved Gil’s legs off the sofa, sitting down beside the
killer.

***

They served
and drank the tea in relative silence, a silence broken only
occasionally by the sound of a sharp intake of breath as the hot
tea met a cut lip, or a mistreated muscle cramped. Gil stared at
Dee intently for a moment, then made a declaration.