Darke Mission (20 page)

JJ knew that Gil would be on the case in a flash. She was a great friend, nanny and bodyguard to Cyrus. Now some of her other skills may need to come to the fore.

It may take Renault and other car manufacturers a few days to build a car, but a top notch Formula 1 team can build a race car from scratch overnight. JJ leant back in his Eurostar seat and closed his eyes. This had been a good day. He was silently humming in his head Ray Parker's
Ghostbusters
theme.

Harold McFarlane was the answer to your question, Ray.

“C'mon Cyrus,” yelled Gil Haning. “Shift your skinny butt and turn your computer off. Time to exercise your body not just your mind.”

Gil, aka Zhang Bai Ling, had already been training herself for about thirty minutes in JJ Darke's gym at his house in Markham Square. Her solo training sessions were akin to a religious ceremony. She always wore a black short-cropped sleeveless top with sports bra, specialist lightweight black and grey three-quarter length pants, and her favourite silvery white trainers.

Tonight the starting point, after warming up, was a session with the heavy bag. She recalled the first time she had put on boxing wraps. It was a nightmare of dexterity. Now with her Fairtex wraps, she was like a machine weaving the material in and out of her slim fingers, ensuring the knuckles were fully protected, that the wraps were tight and secure, and that the loop at the end was firmly in place. Then she'd slip on her mid-weight Immortal black boxing gloves. They felt good. On her toes, but not moving like a gazelle given her limp left leg, she circled the heavy bag, securely hanging from the basement's ceiling. Left jab, right jab, a few slow shots to the bag, just to get the range. Left hook, two straight right jabs, upper cut, right cross. She continued on her routine. Once she was confident enough with the timing and power of her punches, she gradually introduced elbows and knees. Elbow shots were her favourite attack blows. However, unlike the hands and knuckles, they were unprotected. Badly-timed elbow shots meant grazing, bleeding and annoying though moderate pain. Some nights after training, she'd be bleeding from both elbows. She regarded it as a badge of honour, but in fact it meant that her timing was out. On a heavy bag or a training pad a well-timed elbow shot made the sound of a dull thud, a badly-timed hit led to a scraping one. Tonight she was all dull thud. Knee shots currently meant left knee shots. To retain balance and be in the correct posture for a powerful knee attack to the groin or stomach meant that your standing leg had to be firmly planted on the ground, supple but stable. Gil's left leg was still hobbly-wobbly so right knee attacks tended to be weak, limp, poorly timed. Similarly, her roundhouse kicks tended to be with the left leg. The limb was still powerful enough to do damage, indeed Gil's skills were sufficient to break any attacker's leg with one blow.

Hooks, jabs, crosses, knees and elbows were the potential weapons of the human body. They were developed into a system of attack and defence moves by Bruce Lee and called Jeet Kune Do, the way of the intercepting fist. Essentially, Lee had become unenthused about traditional Chinese martial arts, he wanted to discard the flowery, purely aesthetic and rigidly systematic moves for a process that was more useful in the real world, a system that was not a system, but flowed like water. To the casual observer, JKD combined Western boxing techniques with Eastern kicking ones, and an elbow and knee from mixed martial arts. Along with Krav Maga, it was perhaps the most street wise of the martial arts.

Having previously trained in martial arts, Gil had stood out when JJ ran a 12 week course for a select few in the US security services, back in 2010. JKD students from the CIA, FBI and the NSA came to JJ's classes and several of them, including Gil, continued training on their own or with personal instructors thereafter. JJ was somewhat JKD old school, had a 2
^nd
ranking and had one of the meanest spinning elbow shots Gil had ever seen. When they sparred now, with protective helmets on, JJ was a tad slower than he used to be but this was balanced by Gil's limp. They were nearly evenly matched but the Scot still had the greater power.

“Cyrus!” bellowed Gil yet again. “For goodness sake, c'mon, you need to release some of those endorphins dormant in your nerdy body.”

“OK, OK, I'm coming,” groaned Cyrus, loping unenthusiastically down the stairs to the basement. He looked like the guy from
Napoleon Dynamite
, all gawky and uncoordinated, regular T-shirt on, baggy white shorts and a pair of black and green trainers. “Do we have to do this Gil? I'm tired and I could happily flop,” said the kid.

“Yes, we have to do it Cyrus,” Gil replied. “I know you play tennis and do a bit of gym training, but what happens if you get bullied at school? Are you going to run to the teacher blubbering?”

“I've never been bullied at school,” Cyrus responded quick as a flash and mistakenly thinking that the exit door was opening.

“What if somebody tried to harm your girlfriend, what's her name, Lucy?” Gil countered.

“She's a girl friend, Gil, not a girlfriend,” emphasised Cyrus, a little embarrassed.

“Doesn't matter,” said Gil. “One day or night she may be in your company and some knucklehead wants to move in on her, pulling and pushing her a little. You ask him to stop but he doesn't. Do you take the pose of a curly-topped pipe cleaner or do you do something about it?”

Although at this precise moment, Cyrus was finding Gil very very annoying, he did indeed like her and liked having her around. She was right. Cyrus was no fighter, he wasn't even that tough. He kind of ghosted his way through school having only a couple of close friends and, as yet, not crossing the path of any enemies or bullies. He did like Lucy and while he'd never admit it under parental or ‘bodyguard' questioning, he did want to be her boyfriend. The black scenario painted by Gil that Lucy was in trouble, did indeed disturb Cyrus. What would he do in that position? Calling for help would take too long and there'd be no guarantee help would come. Trying to talk the knucklehead down was a possibility but, unfortunately, one of the characteristics of knuckleheads was that talking and listening were often too much of a strenuous task.

“Fine,” Cyrus said eventually. “What are we practising tonight?”

“Well, young man…” beamed Gil who really liked Cyrus. “You're going to start with a ten minute warm-up on the treadmill, then we're going to give those peas you call muscles a bit of a going over with biceps curls and triceps extensions. Remember arm pain is good pain. No pain, no gain. We are going to build those arms so that the Muscles from Brussels would be happy to have a beer with you.”

“I don't drink beer,” said Cyrus cheekily and feeling somewhat ancient that he actually knew who the Muscles from Brussels was.

Gil gave him a look. Cyrus plodded on to the treadmill, started with a two minute slightly inclined walk to check hamstrings and the like and then picked up the pace.

“Once that curly top of yours starts to reveal the glistening signs of sweat, we'll move to the weights. Then we're going to practise the art of accurate and timely fist strikes. Got it?” said Gil, now clearly getting her own way.

“Got it, uber-fuhrer Haning,” replied Cyrus and off he went, however reluctantly, on his exercise regime.

Gil was looking at Cyrus like a big sister to a wee brother. He was a good-looking boy, clearly smart and the apple of JJ's eye. He was tall and slim but he was going to need to develop his stamina and strength. This was a far cry from her NSA work at LINEAR and an even farther cry from that fateful night in Boston, mused Gil, as she was studying Cyrus's running style. She was very grateful to JJ for the opportunity to come to London to rest and recuperate. She found out that it was Jayne Hayden, the NSA's chief officer in Boston, who had made the call to JJ. They had known each other from their CIA and MI5 days respectively and had kept in social, if not operational, touch. Jane knew that Cyrus's mother had died and that JJ was attempting to raise Cyrus on his own. She asked JJ if he remembered Zhang Bai Ling, and he had as she was one of his best JKD students.

Jane Hayden proposed that Bai Ling could do with a non-operational role outside the USA for a while, maybe even a very long while, and JJ felt that an interesting young woman may make a good companion, nanny or even ‘bodyguard' as Cyrus called her. Gil had said yes to the job offer and much of it was enjoyable. She was well paid by JJ. On top of her Federal pension that she received as part of her forced retirement from the NSA, that was a welcome income. She lived in a cool part of London courtesy of the NSA, and still had enough spare cash to send regular amounts to her family in Hong Kong. JJ was a good boss and a fine friend. He never bothered her in the way that forty-something men can sometimes bother younger women. He appeared to care for her well-being and he trusted her implicitly with Cyrus.

It was good but it was not all good. She loved being with JJ and Cyrus. She was determined to teach the younger Darke some skills that he might need whenever he left the uniquely closeted atmosphere of private schools in Chelsea and into the darkness that was the real world. She was a maths genius and one of the youngest NSA officers to see action. She missed both. Her left knee may be dud but she did not want her brain or skills to atrophy as well.

As Cyrus was wilting under the pressure of his third set of fifteen bicep curl repetitions with two 10kg weights, Gil's smartphone beeped from the bench opposite her. It was an email from JJ. He wanted to acquire two trucks that were of comparable dimensions to Chinese FAW Jie Fang trucks with Shaanxi tankers attached. He'd explain why later. Once acquired, she was to have them delivered to Harold McFarlane at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, Surrey. In the next day or two would be fine.

Oooooh
, thought Gil. That wasn't pick up some groceries that Ocado didn't deliver, or make sure Cyrus didn't stay up all night on his computer. That request had a hint of action about it. Trucks that looked like Chinese trucks, tankers attached, top-notch Formula One team. I wonder what's afoot, she thought. Gil replied to JJ's email straight away. She was on it, well she would be on it once she finished training and exhausting Cyrus. Tomorrow she'd quiz JJ. Things were looking up, maybe.

“Right Cyrus,” said Gil somewhat more bouncily than earlier in the evening. “Get your wraps and gloves on. You're going to do some damage to this here heavy punch bag and then we'll spar for a few minutes. I'll show you how to do your wraps again if you've forgotten. C'mon, chop-chop, get a shifty on, no time for lolly gagging. Time to turn you into a lean, mean pipe-cleaning machine,” encouraged Gil, laughing slightly as she said it.

Cyrus struggled to his feet, popped his Century full-face protective helmet on and wearily tried to do his own wraps.
That Gil's due some payback
, he thought, in the nicest possible way.

* * *

McLaren's Technology Centre was a piece of art. Indeed, it was shortlisted for the 2005 Stirling Prize, only to be beaten by the Scottish Parliament building. JJ liked that. However, neither Scotland's Parliament building in Edinburgh nor its in-house parliamentarians were going to be of much use to JJ today. No, today was all about design, technology and speed. In total, the MTC was around half a million square metres, all artificial lakes and glass fronted buildings. It had cost around £300 million to build and was completed in 2004. It was the brainchild of Ron Dennis, CEO and joint owner of the McLaren group. He wanted to consolidate all McLaren's activities on one site as opposed to the eighteen previous operations scattered around southern England. Much of McLaren's activities on this site spearheaded the advancement of the Formula One team and the sports car division. It had a state of the art 145m long circuit shaped wind tunnel for the aerodynamic testing of the F1 cars.

As JJ and Gil drove along the A3 in JJ's Porsche the wind tunnel building would not be on their itinerary. They were headed for a different building at the far end of the complex. While the majority of McLaren's work force, over 1,000 strong, were involved in the design, assembly and testing of F1 and super car vehicles some fifty or so excluding drivers were involved with McLaren's massive trucks. These both transported the F1 cars and housed much of the on circuit technology to assess their performance, the weather, the tyres and the like. It was here that JJ and Gil hoped to discover some good news.

It had been two days since JJ had emailed Gil her instructions. True to her word she was on it in a flash and had found two Volvo FMX trucks with tankers attached ready for sale and collection. These were as close as she could get to the dimensions and silhouette of the Chinese FAW trucks that JJ had detailed and they should be at McLaren this morning. As befitted their partnership, McLaren used primarily Mercedes trucks to transport their F1 cars across the world but occasionally these were all tied up and extracurricular manufacturers were called upon. With the Formula One team and full entourage in Australia for the opening race of the FIA Championship it would not have been unusual for those in Woking to see a Volvo truck or two drive into the MTC.

After JJ had returned from his Paris day trip with Yves-Jacques, he had informed Gil of the reason for the trucks and, indeed, filled her in on the whole story, blackmail and insider trading included. Gil had wanted to take Neil Robson out, after all she was a first-class sniper, and could drill the conniving sludgeball from over 3,000 metres away. JJ smiled at that prospect but pointed out to Gil that the file would still exist even if Neil Robson didn't and that FCA officers Watts and Woodhouse would sense an even smellier rat.

“How do you know this McFarlane dude we're going to see?” Gil asked JJ as they sped past the Esher exit on the A3, on their way to Woking. JJ was keeping more or less to the 70mph speed limit. This wasn't that easy in a Porsche Carrera 4S that almost by instinct wanted to exceed whatever speed limit was applicable but JJ could do without any more hassle. A fine or a driving disqualification was not on the agenda for today.

“He worked for me indirectly when I used to do some GT racing,” he replied. “For a season I ran a McLaren F1 GTR in club and FIA GT races, culminating in a Le Mans entry, then I ran a Porsche team in the Porsche Super Cup. This was about fifteen years ago, before Cyrus was born. Harold made the cars work, fixed their broken parts and ensured that my cars were on track, on time and in good shape. He was on a bit of a financial downer, could not afford to send his two daughters to university, so I helped him out.”