Sentinel Five (The Redaction Chronicles Book 2) (19 page)

Barney Upwright had once been one of the best Security Service surveillance watchers in the business. That had been in his heyday during the Second World War, looking out for enemy agents and Fifth Columnists, and then during the early days of the Cold War in London, trailing Soviet agents to and fro from meeting some source or other.

Now he was a broken down private detective who occasionally did 'funny' jobs for those boys across the river in Lambeth and his old mob at the Security Service. Most of his day-to-day work was the mundane jobs; process serving court papers, following cheating spouses ('Matrimonials' they called it these days) and tracking down people that owed money. But occasionally, just every now and then, he'd get a call from his old firm or their sister service, asking if Barney Upwright wouldn't mind taking on the odd 'unofficial' and very discreet job.

Take today's number for example. Barney had received a phone call in his dingy office above an Italian restaurant in Battersea. The caller was Colonel Stephen Masterman, recently retired SIS officer who was known to Barney from the old days. How did Barney fancy a three-day surveillance job? Expenses up front, low risk, easy, just a little snooping around to see where a particular 'gentleman' was going. Well, Barney fancied it very much thank you Colonel! The Colonel was always a charmer, a decent gent, and within the hour, Barney was planning out his newly acquired surveillance job for the next day.

The following morning he'd loaded up his little Lambretta scooter with his kit for the job; map, binoculars, camera with detachable long range lenses, note pad and pencil.

Barney looked like a librarian. Small, slender, neat, non-descript. He could get lost in a crowd of two, which was why he'd been one of the best surveillance watchers the Security Service had ever had, so he had no doubts he would blend into whatever environment the target was visiting. That first morning, he'd laid up along the street from the target's known address, an exclusive property in Mayfair. He'd watched as the target exited and made his way to his car, a Mercedes Coupe, and drove off. The description he'd been given was perfect; tall, patrician, confident, greying hair. Barney thought the target looked like a man in control of himself. He also thought that he looked like an operator. He would have to be cautious following this man.

The first two days had been humdrum, with nothing out of the ordinary. The target was out of his house at 7.30am, into the car, and off to an anonymous building in Whitehall, a walk to a nearby restaurant at lunch time and then an hour later a walk back to the office. The working day finished for him at 6.30pm and then the target drove to his private club for, Barney assumed, a few drinks before heading home. Barney had hung around, but the target made no attempt to leave the property again. But it was on the third day when the target showed out and did something completely out of the ordinary. On that Wednesday morning, the target left his property slightly later, an hour later in fact, headed to his Mercedes and drove off with Barney on his little scooter in close, but discreet, pursuit. Things took a stranger turn when the Mercedes headed away from the usual Whitehall route and went in a westerly direction, leaving the urban sprawl of central London behind and heading out to suburbia.

Barney's biggest concern was that the Mercedes would just floor it and leave his little scooter behind, but thankfully, his target seemed to be intent on taking a leisurely amble to wherever his destination turned out to be. This was both good and bad for the lone surveillance operator. Good, because at least he could keep a decent 'follow' on his target vehicle, but bad because it meant that Barney would have to be a bit canny, hanging back three vehicles behind, especially if he didn't want to be spotted.

It was when they entered the Borough of Richmond and took a turning leading towards Kew that Barney started to think today was going to be interesting. The big Mercedes turned left down the main high street and headed toward Kew Botanical Gardens, all the while with Barney at full throttle, attempting to keep in sight. When he saw the car turn into the car park, he slowed the scooter down and hung back, pulling over to the kerbside. He counted to fifty in his head then started the engine and set off towards the Botanic Gardens Lion Gate entrance.

After parking the scooter in the small gravel car park, he set off in search of his quarry with camera in hand. To the casual observer he would look like just another horticulturalist, here to take a photographic record of his favourite bushes, shrubs and plants.
Shouldn't be too hard to find,
thought Barney. A tall, distinguished civil servant walking around the gardens mid-week couldn't be too hard to spot. Barney figured his target had a five-minute head start on him and somewhere within the maze of the gardens, he knew he would find him. The trick was, to avoid being spotted. It was as he approached the main grounds that he saw them, sitting next to each other on a bench, admiring the perennials and talking, clearly, but not looking directly at each other.
Like a couple of bloody spies if ever I saw them,
thought Barney. He moved backwards until he was concealed behind some kind of evergreen hedge and changed the standard lens on his camera to the long range one. The target and his pal were thirty feet away and with this lens at this range, he would be able to I.D. them in detail.

Barney brought the camera up to his eye and clicked, heard the whir of the fast motor shutter as it peeled off a couple of shots. A good few snaps of both the targets together, the older one doing the talking and the slightly younger one nodding his head in understanding. Then the passing of some kind of an envelope from his main target to the younger man… snap… snap… snap… before he ripped it open and stared at the piece of paper inside. Snap… snap… snap… Barney clicked off a few more shots and watched as the two men went their separate ways, one to the north and one, his target, back the way he had originally come. Barney didn't know, could only guess, that this was exactly what the Colonel was after.

Barney reckoned that those few photos had probably earned him a lovely bonus.

* * *

Less than twenty-four hours later, Masterman stared at the series of black and white surveillance photos. He knew both men. Trench, he certainly recognised, despite the longer hair and different style. But it was the other man. This was the confirmation of the Raven's traitor inside British Intelligence.

Gorilla had managed to get word to one of their agents, a hooker by the name of Nancy Lo in Hong Kong, about what he'd discovered in Brazil from the chemist, Okawa Reizo. They had a name – the respected businessman, Yoshida Nakata. Penn had set the little dormouse to work, running a trace to see who Nakata had been affiliated with during the war. The day after Nora disappeared, Penn had emptied the dead letter box and read the intelligence hidden there. It was mind blowing, to say the least. The Sentinel team already had a 'possible' confirmation from the information Nora had traced about Yoshida Nakata, regarding who the spy was. But this… this surveillance photograph definitely confirmed it.

“So that's him?” asked Penn.

Masterman nodded. “Most definitely.”

Penn ran a hand through his hair and whistled. “Bloody hell, boss… that's who we've been competing against all along
and
we have evidence of him consorting with a known enemy agent – bloody Trench! Well… what do we do now?”

Masterman thought for a moment and then, as he'd done numerous times before in his life he made the right decision for the mission at hand. “We do nothing.”

“Nothing! But he's there! We could do… something!”

“And we will, in time. But for now, we keep the status quo. He may know bits about us, especially after what happened to Nora, but we know a hell of a lot more about him. We know who he is, who he's met and what he's involved in. What we don't know about him, yet, is just how far he's connected and who else is on his payroll. Going after him is a luxury at the moment; our main priority is getting the Sentinel team close to the Raven and destroying his chances of setting loose a bio-weapon of apocalyptic proportions. I think that's enough in anyone's book.”

“And then later?” said Penn.

Masterman smiled and crunched his walking stick down onto the floor. “Then we find him and squash the little bastard, like a bug.”

THE PAGODA – FEBRUARY 1968

“We should execute him straight away,” said Toshi Goto. Goto was the Raven's top
Shinobi
assassin, a small, lithe man, and a personal student of the
Oyabun
himself. He longed for the honour of killing this infiltrator personally. There were murmurs of agreement around the circle they'd formed. The secret meeting of the Raven's master assassins took place in a darkened dojo, lit only by lanterns, on the third floor of the pagoda that was their sanctuary. Only the trusted
Shinobi
of the clan were allowed to be present and the doors were guarded by the apprentice shadow warriors. They would die defending the
Oyaban
and this meeting's security.

“Oyaban, let me travel to dispatch this gaijin. His body will be sleeping at the bottom of the river that same day,” Toshi Goto continued, his head bowed low in honour of his superior.

Hokku sat away from the barrage of anger, on the fringes, and let the
Shinobi
fight it out about who was going to be the one to complete the kill for the
Oyaban
. They would all battle it out for the honour, to see who would be chosen by the
Karasu
! The chosen assassin would be raised high in the pecking order. They'd received the word from Trench in England about the covert operation being planned against the Raven and his people. How deep they had been infiltrated by an enemy agent and what his true purpose was. Things were becoming complicated, mused Hokku.

“And where would this killing lead us?” The voice that cut through the rabble of noise was that of the Raven. It stilled the atmosphere in the room Instantly. “It would lead us nowhere, a dead assassin, a dead spy. Then what? Why destroy one snake when we can take the whole nest of them? If we leave them alone, they will keep coming back again and again and again… but this way, if we draw them in, we can eliminate them all,” continued the Raven.

The rest of the
Shinobi
all bowed their heads in shame. The Raven, ever the brilliant strategist, had shown them the true path of seeking out an enemy.

“Where is he now, this … British gunman?” asked the Raven.

“He is at a safe house in Hong Kong,
Oyabun
. Following the killings in Brazil, we have kept him under surveillance and containment. At least, until the murder investigation has blown over,” said Hokku.

“Good. Then bring him to me. We will draw these killers out.”

“Here to Japan?” asked Hokku.

The Raven shook his head. “Not just to Japan, but here to the pagoda, to the sanctuary. Let him know that I will meet him here, in my most secret location. He will alert his fellow mercenaries… we open the gates, let them enter and then…

“Then they never leave,” said Hokku, nodding.

“Tell that
gaijin
Trench to find the controllers of this team. He will know what to do. They are his people, after all. We will pit Japanese steel and cunning against western firepower and base stupidity. We will send their heads back to the British. I laugh at their feeble attempts at assassination. They are dogs,” growled the Raven.

“And then?” asked Hokku.

The Raven fixed him with a glare, his milky white damaged eye staring straight ahead. When he spoke, it was with the conviction of a man who knows his years of planning are about to come to fruition. “And then, when the assassins have been killed, the British have paid and they have been thoroughly disgraced, we will release the
Kyonshi
onto the streets of Europe as a warning for those who might try to challenge me again.”

VICTORIA PEAK, HONG KONG – FEBRUARY 1968

Jack Grant lay back on the bed and stared vacantly at the cracks in the ceiling of his bedroom. He'd been that way for the best part of an hour, tracing the spider's web of broken plaster with his eyes. He was frustrated, angry and ready to punch someone's lights out.

As soon as he'd stepped off the plane from Brazil, he'd been met by Trench and handed a bag full of cash and the keys to an apartment with a magnificent view of Victoria Peak. The bag had contained his first bonus payment of $5000 in cash. The apartment was clean and sparse: a bed, a sofa, a dining table, some books, some magazines and a radio, but nothing more. But it was the view out of the bedroom window which compensated for its emptiness.

He was told by Trench to “Dig in and keep a low profile until Hokku and his people have declared you fit for work again,” which was Trench's way of saying he was to remain persona non grata operationally, until the heat had died down about the executions in Rio. So he did as he'd been told, staying close to the apartment, occasionally taking a taxi into town to get out and breathe some fresh air, have a meal, have a drink, go to a club. But he was always the lone man in the shadows at the far table, or at the dark booth in a bar. He stayed hidden. Occasionally, he would get a call from an anonymous male voice to see if he needed anything: booze, drugs… women? Mostly he'd tell the voice on the other end of the line to bugger off. Occasionally, he'd ask for a woman and a bottle of Black Label. The booze was usually of good quality and the girls were pretty and willing. So he did what he always did when he was bored; screwed and drank.

It was at the end of the first day of confinement when he found the bug.

He'd been pacing the apartment, bored, after spending the previous hour working out with some shadow boxing drills. He'd needed to burn off some energy, bleed off the anxiety of the previous few weeks. It was an old routine, one that he practised when he was locked in hotel rooms all over the world. An hour's worth of stretching, footwork, jabs, crosses and hooks on any number of imaginary opponents at least kept him in shape and helped sweat out the alcohol which had been burrowing into his body over the past week. With that out of his system, he'd done what all males do when effectively trapped inside a strange apartment – he'd searched and rummaged to see what he could discover. He'd started with the basics; the phone, the headboard in the bedroom, the light fittings, the usual places where the electronic eavesdropping people tended to fit their devices. He knew they were there somewhere and somebody was no doubt getting an earful of his snoring, pissing in the morning and the noises from the bedroom when the hookers came to visit him.

It was behind the bedroom wall mirror where he confirmed what he suspected had been there all along. A small, penny-sized device, very slim with two short wires jutting out and sending a signal… to where? Not far away, he guessed. Probably the listening team were safely ensconced in an apartment above him, there to monitor his actions and see if he did anything that would be deemed suspicious by his paymasters inside the Raven organisation. So he did the wise thing and left it where it was. Now that he knew where at least one of them was, he could play them at their own game.

Being out of circulation for a while, he knew that he desperately needed to make contact with his case officer. Just to let them know he was alive and still in play. The sooner he could arrange a brush past, the better… he needed to get away from his watchers for an hour or so and write down everything the Japanese chemist had told him, before he'd blown his brains out. The opportunity came the next day, when a thunderstorm knocked out the power to the whole apartment complex. One minute he'd been staring out of the window at the ominous black clouds and lightning sparking out in the distance… the next, the lights had gone out and the gentle hum of the fridge stopped. He'd quickly jumped up and tried the switches, sockets and lights. Nothing. All dead. He knew from experience that reconnecting the power would be a long process, and he also knew that with the power gone, any bugging equipment and covert cameras would be knocked out too. It was an opportunity too good to waste.

He grabbed his jacket and a pen and paper from the desk and ran out of the apartment. He figured he had maybe an hour, at the most. He ran for the stairwell, jumping from landing to landing, pushing himself off from the railings and hitting the floor with a thud. On the ground level he rushed past the reception/security desk and out into the street. The wind and rain hit him at once and started to soak through his summer suit. Moving down the main road, he hit the corner and found a waiting
dik si
driver sitting in an old Humber. Grant pushed a wad of notes through the driver's window and climbed in. The man looked shocked that this soaking wet man had given him so much money.

“Wan Chai! And fast!” Grant barked at the driver, throwing himself into the back seat and waiting for the driver to gun the engine.

The driver knew a good deal when he saw one. Who cared what this angry foreign devil was up to, as long as he paid well? Maybe there would even be a tip at the end of it? The car skidded and pushed its way through the empty, rain-slicked streets, increasing speed in the long straight stretches. In the back seat, Grant was furiously writing down everything he could remember as concisely as he could from what he'd learned over the past few weeks.
It was a bloody mess,
he thought. Trying to write down Grade 'A' intelligence with a blunt pencil on two sheets of paper in the back of a dilapidated taxi in the dark. But try he did… he just hoped Penn would be able to decipher it in time.

He gave them as much as he could… the two men whom he'd killed in Brazil… the details of the
Kyonshi
virus… and the possible location of the pagoda, the Raven's sanctuary and safe zone…

They'd just passed Happy Valley Racecourse when the driver asked, “Where in Wan Chai you want?” His brow furrowed in concentration as he hurled the car around bends, dodging pedestrians.

“The Pussycat Club. You know it?”

“Ha! Everyone knows the Pussycat, mister,” grinned the driver. “Hang on!”

The journey took them about fifteen minutes and soon main roads gave way to the bustling and lively area of Wan Chai, filled with bars, hookers and sailors looking for a good time. The Pussycat Club sat on the corner of Lockhart Road and was a first floor den of iniquity. Its sign hanging outside displayed a topless woman bending down to stroke a Siamese cat. It was one of a myriad of identical bars in the Wan Chai red light district. Grant jumped out of the taxi and watched as it moved off into the traffic before he climbed the narrow stairs to the first floor reception. He could hear the beat of the music even from half way up. At the top stair, there was a smiling Chinese bouncer who directed him to the reception desk. A pretty young Chinese girl served him.

“Is Nancy about tonight?” Grant asked.

“At the bar… she's with a guy, I think,” said the receptionist, nodding toward the interior of the club.

The club itself was busy. The small dance floor already full with a melee of sailors, drunken businessmen and girls all eager to make a quick dollar. He spotted her straight away. It was hard not to. She had femme fatale written all over her. Gorilla thought she modelled her look on the old film noir heroines of the 1940's. She was small and slim and looked ten years younger than her true age. She would never see forty again, but she carried herself well and with grace. She wore a red, figure hugging dress, coiffed black hair and striking red lipstick. She had one foot balanced on the rung of her stool, which allowed her to reveal a touch of her slim thighs.

Jack Grant slid up next to her at the bar, where she was listening to her 'date' for the night, who by the look of it, had drunk too much of the cheap, knock-off champagne the club served to their clients. Her back was to him but he made a point of speaking loudly when the barman came over to take his order. “You serve any Sentinel Vodka here?”

The barman, to his credit, didn't look confused – he just shook his head and pointed to the house brand in the optics. “That will do instead,” said Gorilla and watched as the barman poured him a shot glass full. The stuff was foul… but it had served its purpose. It had caught the attention of the indomitable Nancy Lo, who cast a glance over her beautiful shoulder at the man who'd spoken her activation code word. Gorilla heard her say to her date, “Excuse me, darling, I won't keep you one moment,” before turning to fully face him.

“Hi Nancy, so good to see you! It's been a while,” said Grant, to the complete stranger in front of him. “I see they stopped serving that Sentinel Vodka I liked.”

Nancy Lo regarded the man in front of her with a critical eye. She was a street-wise, no-nonsense hooker of the old school, so she trusted no man at face value. She'd been an old SIS asset who had, on more than one occasion, coerced a businessman or diplomat into giving her a few titbits after her efforts between the sheets with them. She'd thought her spying days were behind her, until she'd been approached by a Major Meadows of the British Secret Service, offering her a cash in hand, no risk job. Listen for the code word and pass messages, nothing that she hadn't done a thousand times before, for one spy or another. They were mostly smartly dressed elderly men, 'prim and proper', her
amah
would have called them. Occasionally, one of them would make a feeble effort to seduce her, but she always kept them at a distance… after all, business was business. But this stocky, bearded man in front of her didn't look like her usual contact. He looked like a thug, like some of the rougher sailors who came into the club, except that he was wearing a suit of good quality and style.

“Sentinel?” she asked. “Sentinel Vodka… I haven't heard of that brand in a while.”

“I hope the company is still trading. I'd like to write to their head office. Maybe I could give them some customer advice. I don't suppose you have their address?” asked Grant. He was keen to move the trade on, eager to get back to The Peak before his absence was noticed.

“I can always be persuaded to pass on a message for my friends,” she said, opening her purse discreetly. Grant quickly reached into his inside jacket pocket for the envelope and slipped it into the purse. She clicked it shut with a discernible
snap
. Grant looked her directly in the eye. He was trusting this bloody woman, not only with the success of this operation, but with his fucking survival. He leaned forward to offer her a kiss on the cheek and whispered, “Nancy, love, I know you're a busy lady, but this message needs to get to my people quick… as fast as you can.”

She accepted the brush of his beard against her cheek and smiled back at him. “My darling… I always look after my friends. You have nothing to worry about. You are in safe hands… maybe when you have some free time, you can come back and buy Nancy a drink?”

Grant nodded and walked away. He just hoped that Nancy Lo was good to her word and she would get the message back to Penn and Sentinel before the next round of bullets started to fly. He found a taxi cab outside and was back at the apartment complex thirty minutes later, happy to discover that the power was still out. The Raven surveillance operators secreted somewhere in the floors above him would be pacing furiously, waiting for the power to come back on to kick start their live feed.
Yeah well, fuck them,
he thought. He'd slipped out of the net, right from under their noses and for those few hours he'd been one lucky son of a bitch.

* * *

By the end of the second week he was bouncing off the walls, not so much because of his isolation in the apartment, but because he was tied to Hong Kong. He wanted to get out and find his own place… anywhere, were eyes and ears didn't have him under surveillance. It was like being smothered and he was sick of it.

He trashed the apartment, upended the sofa, smashed the crockery in the kitchen and generally went on a violent spree. That would give them something to listen to, the bastards. It was by the end of the third week, when the surveillance listeners thought that the 'Gorilla' was going to go on another one of his rampages when a visitor arrived. There was no fanfare, no VIP reception. The big man simply walked into the apartment, his bulk filling the doorframe, walked up to Jack Grant who was laying naked on the bed, half-drunk from the night before, and stared down at the little Redactor.

“So Mr. Grant, I hear you've been busy,” said Hokku, looking his most fearsome. “We need to talk. We have some serious questions that we need you to answer.”

“Go away,” snarled Grant, playing the part of angry drunk. He propped himself up on his elbow and glared at the huge Japanese man at the end of the bed.

Hokku smiled slowly and Grant knew he'd gotten under his skin. Hokku wasn't used to having subordinates talk to him like that, especially 'foreign devils' like this. “Mr. Grant, forgive me, but if you don't get up, get dressed and tell me what I need to know, I am going to lift you from that bed and take your head in my hands and I'm going to crush your skull until your eyes pop.”

Grant looked at the giant's hands and knew that would be the least those hands were capable of. “Where the fuck is Trench,” he barked, determined to regain some initiative.

“Trench is away for a while, a little job he is doing for us. You can deal with me for the time being.”

“I work for Trench. I'll talk to him,” growled Grant.

Hokku shook his head and laughed. “No, Mr. Grant you work for me, as does Trench. I pay you your fees and I make the decisions. Now we can do this the hard way or the easy way.”

Grant smiled; it was the type of line he'd used himself on the unwary. So having it thrown back at him by this formidable opponent was a bit disconcerting. “Okay, let's talk,” he said, lifting up the dining table and chairs that he'd thrown across the room the night before in one of his 'rages'. Both men sat by the window looking out over the bay, the early morning sun bathing the room a cloudy orange colour.