DARKNET CORPORATION (16 page)

Mert’s
manager, John, responded, “I am sure Mert was perfectly able
to get into trouble, on his own. He’s never been one to take a backward step
and if he went in guns blazing it would be because he felt he needed to.”

“The man who shot him is George Wood, and ex-special services soldier I
have been tailing all the way from Afghanistan. He’s a proper bastard. He
knifed to death my partner in Kabul. He’s going to pay for this.”

They discussed what immediate needs Mert might have and Bill asked Mert if
there was anything he needed. Mert shook his head. He probably wasn’t able to
think straight anyway, thought Bill. John promised to arrange support and to
get someone onsite in Bad Hersfeld, as soon as possible.

Bill asked about
Mert’s
vehicle and John agreed
that if Bill needed it he should take it and they could sort it out later. He
rummaged around in
Mert’s
jacket in the slim wardrobe
next to his bed; slipped the car key off the keyring and pocketed it. This made
life a little easier for Bill. At least he had wheels.

Chapter Nineteen

Turning sharply right out of the Eurotunnel transporter and up the ramp
into England, Bill felt the chill already.

Exiting the Eurotunnel complex and onto the M20, Bill was on the final leg
to ‘home base’ and what he hoped would be a lot more support and capability
than he had been working with so far. He had been ‘in the field’ and pretty
much on his own for what seemed a lifetime.

The dual carriageway gave him time to adjust to driving on the ‘other
side’ of the road and the quality of the highway allowed him to make good
progress. He had been driving for several hours since Bad Hersfeld but would be
at his journey’s end soon. He convinced himself that driving all the way was
easier than trying to find an international airport from the middle of rural
Germany, waiting for a flight and then getting back to London from Heathrow or
some other airport. It was certainly simpler.

He had just passed the town of Ashford in Kent when he noticed a black
SUV behind him. He was immediately suspicious of ALL black SUV’s now and
admonished himself for his paranoia.

The road was quiet here and the black SUV accelerated and moved out into
the outside lane to overtake. He watched his side mirror and noticed the
passenger side front and back windows being lowered. “What the fuck?” he said
incredulous, still watching carefully as the SUV accelerated to come up
alongside him.

Fully apprehensive now he saw short gun barrels and sights poke out both
windows and he slammed on his brakes as the continuous volley of shots ripped
across the windows from back to front blowing them all out as he ducked down as
best he could. The noise was deafening and the suddenness of it all, shocking.
Glass granules rained down everywhere.

Sliding to a stop Bill pulled his Glock. The black SUV had also slid to a
stop some hundred metres away and was reversing towards him, coming back for
the kill. Bill was shocked that his assailants were so determined and fearless.

There were figures leaning out of windows on either side of the SUV as
they reversed. Bill took careful aim and fired continuously out of what was
left of the front windscreen towards the figure on the nearside, concerned that
stray bullets from firing at the offside would strike people in the other
carriageway. He saw a cloud of red mist as the shooter on the left stopped
firing. The shooter on the right stopped too and the SUV screamed to a halt and
took off, becoming a smaller target by the second. In the heat of the moment he
did not get even a glimpse of the registration. It all happened so fast.

He pulled onto the hard shoulder and stepped out of the car to check
himself. He knew that adrenalin would mask any pain from injury and that if he
was hit he would need to deal with it quickly. There was no blood flow, only
scratches from the glass shower. His hands were shaking and he felt cold, only
partly from the cold breeze. He changed the clip in case the bastards came back
again and checked up the road to see if they would come back on the opposite
carriageway. He stepped to the back of the car to use it as cover.

A family in an old station wagon, seeing the damaged car, pulled over
stopped to give assistance. Bill waved them on with his Glock, concerned for
their safety if the assassins came back and suspicious of anyone. Screaming in
alarm, they drove on.

Bill pulled out his phone and dialled his London section boss, Fenton
Curry, universally known as ‘eF’; a pun on the famous nickname of the founder
of MI6, Mansfield Cumming, who was referred to as; “C”.

“
eF
? It’s Bill. I’m on the M20 on my way into
London. I’ve just been shot up by two gunmen in a black SUV, just north of
Ashford.”

“Good God! Are you alright?” Curry asked.

“Yeah.
I’m fine, but the car’s got no windows. It looks like it’s
driveable, though,” suggested Bill.

“Where are the gunmen now?”

“They’re gone. I shot after them so they know they didn’t get me. I am
pretty sure I pinged one of them,” Bill said.

“Don’t go anywhere. I’m going to get the local police to you as soon as
possible and get them to escort you here. Have you still got the hardware?”

“Yeah.
That’s safe.”

Curry said he would call back once he had an estimated time of arrival
for the police escort. Bill stood behind the shot up car watching passers-by
looking stunned at the wrecked car, looking out himself for threats or black
SUVs coming in either direction.

Bill saw a police car whizz by on the opposite carriageway lights
flashing just as the phone went. It was Curry telling him that local Kent
police traffic patrol vehicle would be with him in minutes and would take him
directly into the SIS centre in London. Before the call was finished the police
car with the flashing lights came up his carriageway and pulled up behind his
car. The officers told Bill that a tow truck was on its way and detectives had
been informed of the incident and would come to interview him later. Bill
grabbed his bag and jumped in the back seat of the patrol car.

Whisked at great speed up the M20 and with lights flashing and cars
getting out of the way, Bill arrived at ‘Legoland’, the name for the
ziggurat-like SIS building complex on the Albert Embankment next to Vauxhall
Bridge, as it got dark.

-|-

“Bill! It’s good to have you back in one piece! Are you alright?” said
Curry shaking him by the hand, vigorously.

“How the hell did the shooters know who and where I was?” Bill had been
wrestling with this thought all the way up the M20. He assumed that the only
way it could possibly be done would be if someone in the security intelligence
services had leaked either the vehicle registration of
Mert’s
car or a passport flag when he crossed the border.

Curry acknowledged that they had been advised of his presence at the drug
bust in Germany and that the Eurotunnel border crossing would have come up as a
flag of an MI6 officer entering the UK but that he could not think anyone in
the office would leak something like that. He thought it much more likely that
his car had been recognised by the criminals on the continent and they had
followed him.

“Actually Bill, how the hell was anybody supposed to know where you were?
The last time we knew anything of you, you were still in Afghanistan having
just escaped from a terrorist kidnapping. How did you suddenly turn up in
Germany?”

Bill explained the barest details of his adventurous sojourn up the
Balkan Route and Curry listened intently. Once the tension had reduced
somewhat, Curry expressed the thought that the kind of broad daylight assassination
attempt they had just been subjected to was unheard of in Britain; even more so
for the attempted assassination of members of MI6.

Curry said, “Well, let me get the dongle to GCHQ as soon as possible.”

Bill, startled by the use of the term, ‘dongle’, looked carefully at
Curry, reading his body language and waiting to see what his next move would
be. The pause was pregnant. Finally, Bill said, “I’ve got a couple of
electronic devices to hand over to GCHQ. Let’s do it from the communications centre.”

They went together to the communications centre and Bill handed over the
hard disk copying device and the USB stick the ‘voice’ had also described as a
‘dongle’, to a technician in T-shirt and jeans.

Bill had to show the technician how the disk copying USB stick folded
out. Bill was careful to take in Curry’s non-reaction, suspicious, as always.

The data on the hard disk drive copier and the USB stick would go
directly to GCHQ according to the technician and their assessment would be
shared with the Five-Eyes network, so Jenkins and the CIA office in Kabul would
see it very soon after being registered as ‘interested parties’.

Curry told Bill that rather than booking into a hotel, he had been
assigned an accommodation unit on the fourth floor in the meantime and gave him
the room number. It had been decided that Bill would remain inside Legoland
until the attempt on his life had been investigated and they knew where the
threat came from.

Bill felt sure that the syndicate that Wood was mixed up in was that
threat, but so far they knew next to nothing about them.

In a tiny anteroom in the communications centre Bill was finally able to
login to his MI6 account and check on news of Dinner-Jacket. There was a new
subdirectory for the Bad Hersfeld incident and another button to launch the
relationship database that Bill assumed was the one Jenkins had talked about.
There was also the MP3 file of the telephone intercept Jenkins had played him
of Wood talking to the ‘voice’, and several summary files. Bill clicked on the
Bad Hersfeld subdirectory.

There were a large number of files listed, many where the file name was
repeated with an –EN added to the name. He clicked on the first one and saw a
standard German Federal Police report form detailing the incident at the Bad
Hersfeld warehouse. This looked like the original document, scanned and filed
electronically. He closed it and clicked on the copy with the –EN added. This
proved to be an English translation of the same police report. “Excellent,”
thought Bill, “…the full facts, as collated.”

The first report didn’t add much to what he already knew being the
initial brief of the facts, locations, who from the various branches of police
attended and various operational details. “Very German,” thought Bill.

He worked his way through the English translation documents and
discovered that the interrogations had suggested that the drug operation at the
warehouse was not an exchange or sale but was the breakdown of the bulk
shipment into individual deliveries by the syndicate itself. Essentially it was
a warehouse distribution operation. The actual wholesale drug transactions were
to occur elsewhere with the customers and this would be where the money would
be exchanged for the drugs.

Bill thought, “One small mystery solved.”

Another clumsy translation of the interrogation of the forklift driver
confirmed the use of the laptop as a communications method:

Detective Brandt: Who to collect the drugs came from?

Albert Schmidt: I'm not one of them. They held me the anteroom. There
were about a dozen visitors. Everyone waited until the great Englishman spoke
into his laptop and then a little later she came. He knew them all and greeted
them and took them to the pile of drugs that was for them. They counted the
bags and put them in their cars and left.

Detective Brandt: And what did he say to them, the great Englishman?

Albert Schmidt: He spoke in English. I did not, so I do not understand
what they said. They all seemed very happy and in a hurry.

Bill read the police report of finding the body of the hijacked BMW
driver and stopped, finding the personal details of the man hard to read. His
car had been found in Frankfurt. There were no fingerprints found in the
vehicle other than the driver and members of his family.

As he started to muse over what he had read so far, his mobile buzzed.

“There’s a Detective Chief Superintendent Cullen and a Detective
Inspector Gower from the Met here to interview you. I’ve put them in meeting room
2 on the ground floor. Can I tell them when you will see them, sir?” asked the
voice.

“I’ll be right down. Thanks.” Bill acknowledged and got up wearily to go
tell his story.

Cullen was a surprisingly young looking man, maybe forty Bill guessed, of
solid build and dark hair with just a wisp of grey at the temples. He looked a
‘man-of-the-world’ commanding-type who was knowledgeable and competent in a
variety of mores. His offsider, Gower, was much younger, gangly-tall and
academic-looking.

After the introductions Cullen started, “Well, Mr Hodge. You’ve been
through the wars.”

Bill didn’t think it was a question so said nothing. Cullen looked,
studying his man, as he no doubt always did.

He tried again. “Perhaps you could start at the beginning and talk us
through the whole incident?”

Bill described the entire shooting from leaving the Eurotunnel in
Folkestone to being picked up by the police patrol car.

“And you think it might be associated with a case you are currently
working on?” Cullen asked and Gower looked up from his notes in anticipation.

“There’s every chance that it is. I had been following a heroin shipment
from Pakistan that ended up in Germany.
Bad Hersfeld.
Once we located the warehouse they were using, we led the
Bundespolitzei
to them and there was a shootout. You need to make contact with Max Brandt of
the
Hesse
State
Kriminalpolitzei
.

From Turkey to Germany there were two black SUV escorts for the drugs, so
when the black SUV came up behind me it sparked my attention just in time to
avoid being cut in half by automatic fire.” Bill stated.

“Was it one of the escort vehicles?” asked Cullen.

“No, they are both in Bad Hersfeld. One was captured and the other
crashed and burned at the drug bust, but it was a similar looking vehicle,”
replied Bill.