Exit wound

14

Wednesday, 29 April 2009

0220 hrs

Dex studied the little plastic cup his G-and-T had been served in like it was something he’d found under his shoe. He finally gave it a squeeze and moved it to his mouth. He took a sip and turned in his seat to face the two of us in the row behind. ‘Cheers, chaps.’

I returned the toast with a red wine that perfectly matched the shit-on-a-tray in front of me.

Kenneth Merryweather, as his cover passport called him, wasn’t so enthusiastic. ‘Yeah, cheers.’ He dunked his bread roll in his wine and had a munch.

We still had half the seven-hour flight from Heathrow ahead of us. I’d been expecting us to be packed in like sardines, the price you pay for taking your golf trip on the cheap, but I was wrong. There were fewer than a hundred people on the aircraft. Nearly everyone, except Red Ken and me, had their own row of seats to spread out on.

‘Empty planes out, full planes back.’ Mr Merryweather was taking a lot of pleasure in how hard the recession had hit Dubai. ‘There are more than three thousand wagons abandoned in the airport car parks at any one time because of expats doing runners.’ He shook his head. ‘Lose your job, and those fuckers hold your bank account until you pay your debts – and lots of people are losing their jobs. It’s better to get straight to the airport and fuck off before they get a grip of you.’

I’d never been to Dubai, and Dexter Khan had only ever transited through before the two recces he’d made with Red Ken. Tenny would have been fresh to it too. Red Ken and Dex had already prepared the ground on those two trips. As soon as we met the guy who’d brought Red Ken the idea in the first place, it was straight into the job.

Red Ken knew Dubai like the back of his hand. He had worked there on the BG (bodyguarding) circuit for the best part of a year. It was supposed to have been for much longer. Chrissie had even gone out and joined him. Whatever it was that had gone wrong in their marriage, I got the sense that Dubai had tipped the scales. I wasn’t going to ask specifics. If he’d wanted me to know he would have told me.

Of much greater concern for me was the lack of information. Not just the little I had been told, but the little they seemed to know. It was unlike these two to go into something so serious without being in control. Something was wrong with this job, and something was wrong with these two to make them take such a risk. They’d thought it was a joke when I’d said I was coming along to look after them. It wasn’t.

Dex turned to face us again. ‘Tuck in, chaps – you’ll need plenty of energy for eighteen holes.’ He was a member of a posh club in Surrey and had brought his own clubs with him. He was even wearing a blue Pringle sweater and Burberry patterned slacks. Red Ken was dressed much the same, and unfortunately so was I. We looked like P. Diddy’s entourage.

Three days ago, Red Ken had let me rant on about how much I hated golf. I couldn’t see the reason for it except as an excuse for dickheads like Dex to wear clown outfits. To me it was a waste of land, sand, time, water and metal. Only once I’d finished condemning every golf player on the planet did Red Ken admit he also played – and that Dex had put him up for membership.

The worst news was that he had an old set of clubs he was going to lend me. Everything had to look normal. I couldn’t be walking round with brand-new gear. We were three car-showroom salesmen, off to ‘swing a few’, as Dex put it, and maybe have some other fun. Dubai was awash with Russian whores, Red Ken said. One of the things Chrissie had hated about the place was prostitutes looking her up and down if she had a drink with her husband in a hotel bar. They’d thought she was invading their turf.

I’d looked around at our fellow passengers in Departures. One or two groups looked much the same as us. Our cover was good. Nothing could be discovered about us because nothing was hidden.

The four PMC (private military company) guys on their way to Kabul had also been easy to place, with their chunky Luminoxes hanging off their wrists with mini compasses on the straps, and high-sleeved T-shirts to show off their new biceps. The only air bridges into Kabul were via Delhi and Dubai, and I knew from past experience which airport I’d rather transit through. Apart from work, the only two things to do out there were watch porn and take part in Operation Massive: hitting the weights. The NAAFI in Kandahar sold more tubs of body-building supplements than Mars bars. But what really gave these guys away were the desert-coloured Bug Out day-sacks that everyone bought from the American PX. Every bit as much a badge, I supposed, as our stupid golf bags. They’d certainly looked back at Merryweather, Khan and Simmons the same way Dex had looked at his plastic cup.

The other two knew what they were doing when it came to drivers and putters, but I was on the five-day trip as a golf atheist. They were going to enlighten and convert me. There would be no talk of the job during the flight or at any time unless we were out of a building and on our own. Dubai might be Disneyland on Gas Mark Ten, as Red Ken called it, but the place was swarming with police informers. The government had an image to protect. They were even thinking about a law to prosecute locally based journalists if they hinted Dubai was being hit by the world downturn.

Besides that, first-class seats in aircraft had been bugged on European and American airlines as early as the 1980s. Industrial espionage was rife. It still was. We worked on the assumption that every seat was bugged on every airline.

Red Ken’s plan had few moving parts. Keep it simple, stupid, was a principle all three of us knew worked, and as we were all stupid to be on this job it was a good one. We were going to play a round straight off the plane at six thirty. That was when we’d meet the man who’d organized it – organized it far too much, in fact, even down to the passports.

Red Ken wouldn’t give any more details about who he was. ‘He doesn’t want you to know until you meet, son. He’s a funny fucker like that. But he’s going to make us all a lot of cash – so just wait.’

I’d been bombarding him with questions for days. For starters, why had Red Ken, Dex and Tenny been picked as a crew?

‘Because we’re good.’ Red Ken was serious. ‘There can’t be any room for fuck-ups. That’s what Special Forces are about – in and out before anyone knows. This isn’t about running into a bank with sawn-offs and grabbing the till. This is about lifting gold that no one knows exists – it needs to be done covertly. That’s your reason, Nick.’

I explored the chicken-something while Dex put on his headphones and laughed too loud at a movie.

Red Ken leant across the spare seat between us and gave me a nudge. ‘He was like that when we came over last time. I even think it’s the same film.’

The final of the two recces had been a week before the funeral. Tenny would have been on his post-tour leave, before returning to the battalion to go through the process of getting out – having massively boosted his pension.

Dex caught us laughing at him and pulled off one earphone. ‘What?’

Red Ken pushed himself forward so his head was nearly between the rests. ‘I was saying Nick should apply to your club.’

‘You’d love it.’ One earphone was still on his cheek. ‘I’ll introduce you to the pro and maybe we can get your game up. Then I’ll-’

I reached between the seats, pulled back the earphone and let go.

‘Very funny.’ He broke into a laugh and then his eyes were back on the screen.

I bit the cellophane off my rectangle of cheese. ‘I wish I was like knob-head Laughing Boy, not a worry in the world, just getting on with life and a dodgy G-and-T.’

Red Ken sat back in his seat and stared at the blank screen in front of him. ‘That’s not the way, mate. You got no one meeting you when you get back from the trip?’

‘Like I said at the funeral, no one.’

‘That’s harsh. I’ll have my girls waiting for me. The youngest, Charlotte, has just brought my first grandchild home for a second christening. It’s a girl.’ He ripped the end off a citrus handwipe. ‘The Brits got pissed off over the fact she was going to get christened in Sydney. It’ll be a great day. Looking forward to it big-time.’

15

We dumped our bags at the hotel and had a quick shower and shave. We had to look the part: no stubble on the car-showroom salesmen. The choice of hotel was perfect – near the airport and the golf club, and just short of the city proper. It had seen better days, but fitted our apparent budget.

Half an hour later we met up again in the foyer, golf bags beside us and spiky shoes hanging from the straps.

Red Ken turned down the concierge’s offer of a hotel car. We could have been going to any of the eight or nine courses, so why give away a precise destination when we didn’t have to? Hailing a cab from the main drag didn’t turn out to be easy. It got to the point where Dex was thumbing hopefully at every 4x4 that passed. As if.

Red Ken had been smoking in the shade along with the rest of the social lepers. He took me to one side. The sun bounced off his gigs as he moved his head and grinned. ‘You might not like who we’re meeting up with this morning any more than we do, but it’s too late to say no. Just think of what this gives us, Nick. Think about Janice and the kids. That’s why we’re here. Besides, you have to look after us two, right?’

Dex wandered back, dejected.

I laughed. ‘Didn’t they teach you cab skills in the RAF?’

Red Ken looked up and down the road. ‘I’ll show you how it’s done in Para Reg.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and stepped off the kerb. Of course a cab was approaching – that was why he’d done it. He waved it down.

We loaded the clubs into the boot and Dex jumped in next to the driver. He was an Indian in a white shirt and tie. Dex was going to blend in perfectly. ‘Dubai Creek Golf and Yacht Club.’

There wasn’t much else to say. We weren’t going to talk in front of our new mate, even though the big thing for me was that we were on our way to meet the middleman for this ‘little wheeze’, as Dex kept calling it. He had his head buried in Golf Clubs of the World and was getting very hyper.

He turned and nodded with excitement. ‘Par seventy-one, 6,857 yards.’

I nodded back as if I gave a shit. Red Ken smiled, but it faded as he looked out of the window at the throngs of Filipinos and Indian cleaners washing store-fronts. Cranes cut into the sky in all directions above half-finished buildings. The ones that had been completed towered above us. I’d never seen so much marble, glass and steel. Dubai looked like Hong Kong on steroids, designed by architects on LSD.

We peeled off the highway and hit the approach road to the clubhouse. It had been designed to look like an enormous white Bedouin tent, pitched in a sprawling oasis of green.

The cab drew up outside the main door and Dex jumped out. He busied himself with loading the bags onto a trolley while Red Ken left to look for the elusive fourth man of this crew. I was left to pay the taxi. That was one bit of cab skills they both knew.

A Land Cruiser drew up behind Dex while he was still unloading. The driver and passenger were two sun-dried women in their sixties. They looked like they’d been getting drunk in the city since Margaret Thatcher’s era. They had all the golf gear on, down to the peaked plastic hats without the crown. Their jewellery jangled, but not as much as their accents. The driver left the engine running. One clambered down in a pink polo shirt, checked shorts and golfing shoes and shouted back into the wagon, at her blue-shirted friend, ‘I’ll get a boy.’ She was Romford, born and bred.

She walked between the bonnet of her 4x4 and the rear of our taxi as Dex straightened up from the boot. She pointed at her wagon. ‘When you’ve finished with those, our bags are in the back.’

I opened my mouth to object but Dex was too quick. He put on the worst Indian-waiter voice ever. ‘Yes, memsahib.’ He gave an exaggerated bow that was totally wasted on them as they disappeared into the clubhouse.

‘What the fuck you doing, Dex? We got a job to do here, mate.’

He smiled and did the Indian shaking of the head to indicate yes. ‘Getting in character.’

Red Ken came back in time to see Dex at the back of the Land Cruiser and me with the trolley holding our bags. Another Indian guy was waiting to drive it away. ‘What’s he doing now?’

I explained as we picked up the bags and headed inside. Red Ken steered me to a leather sofa while we waited for Dex. We watched as he deposited the bags with the women in the foyer. ‘You know, this place is filled with so many obnoxious, incompetent fuckers, especially in senior positions. Back in the UK they wouldn’t last ten minutes behind the counter at McDonald’s, let alone in management.’

Dex waited for a tip. The sun-drieds ignored him.

Red Ken was living up to his name – come the revolution and all that. ‘I bet those two have maids like everyone else here, running round doing everything but wipe their arses. They used to be Filipinos, but now it’s Somalian girls. These people get a maid and they have total power over her. They keep her passport, even though it’s illegal. They decide what to pay her, and even when she can have a break or a day off.

‘Chrissie hated the way they were treated. Some of the Brit girls used to get on to her. They said she was too soft with the two girls who ran the house, setting a bad example by not treating them like shit.’

Dex walked away empty-handed but smiling. I realized he was singing. ‘“Jolly boating weather…”’ His Indian-waiter accent was outrageous. ‘“And a hay harvest breeze…”’

The Romford Two were sure he was taking the piss but they didn’t know how.

Red Ken picked up his set and handed Dex his. ‘You finished? Can we go and get on?’

Dex grinned and carried on singing. ‘“Swing, swing together…”’

I followed them outside. We sat in the shade to put on our spiky shoes. As soon as we headed back out into the sun, I could see four buggies waiting for us. In one of them sat an egg-shaped guy, his little white legs dangling just above the buggy floor. His short-sleeved white shirt bulged above his smartly pressed red chino shorts and knee-length white socks.

‘Spag.’ Dex beamed. ‘How are you, old chap?’

16

I tried not to look surprised.

Spag stayed under the canopy but a fat and hairy hand stretched out for mine as Dex and Red Ken loaded the clubs into the other three buggies. I clasped his stumpy sausage fingers.

‘You look well, Nick.’

The same couldn’t be said for him. The face under the peak of the cap had had too many visits to the food hall, and its owner had spent far too long sat on his arse. I couldn’t see the eyes behind the dark lenses but I liked to think they were bloodshot. He still wore his seventies porn-star moustache, but like the hair growing out of his ears, it was greyer.

He let go of my hand and put his foot on the pedal. We followed and drew up at the first tee. Spag climbed out, pressed a blue tee into the grass and a ball on top. By the time he stood up again his face was red and sweating.

The other two were out of their wagons, staying out of range of his swing.

Red Ken nodded at me. ‘We knew you’d be pleased.’

Dex watched with a hand over his eyes, waiting to see where this ball was going to end up.

Spag took a practice swing. ‘We’ve got a good tee-off time here. Nobody up our asses, listening in.’ His club went back and whacked the ball. I lost sight of it in the low sun.

‘Me next.’ Dex selected a club and approached the tee. His whiter-than-white teeth gleamed as he grinned at me. ‘It’s a small world, isn’t it?’

The whack as his club hit the ball sounded more solid than Spag’s had.

As Red Ken took his practice swing, Spag came and stood next to me. ‘Damn shame about Tennyson. Goddam Taliban, we should nuke ’em back to the Stone Age.’

I nodded to keep him talking.

‘These guys wanted you on the job all along, you know – like getting the old band together. But nobody knew where to find you. Maybe Tenny getting killed was kind of a blessing.’

I looked down at him. I couldn’t see his face past the peak of his cap. ‘I doubt he’d see it that way. How did you find them?’

‘Right here, on this course. Red was working here at the time. Then I tracked him down in the UK. I need guys I know, who won’t sink under pressure. You still one of those guys, Nick?’ He kept his eyes on Red Ken as he twisted his body, following the imaginary line his ball was going to take. He was waiting for an answer but I wasn’t going to play his game.

‘I need people who I know trust each other and know what they’re doing – and more than that, who are mission-oriented. Nothing will get in the way of the mission.’ Spag shooed away an invisible fly. He still wasn’t getting an answer. Fuck him.

‘Why aren’t you on the ground with us?’

His laugh rang out a split second before Red Ken’s club connected. The ball flew off at an angle.

‘Bollocks!’ Red Ken glared at him, but Spag was oblivious.

‘Once out with you guys was enough.’ The roar of an aircraft taking off just a K away drowned even the hum of traffic on the freeway. He had to raise his voice. ‘That’s for people like you. Like Red’s burger theory – I’m a facilitator, I make things happen. You’re the burgers and I’m, like, a tender sirloin.’

‘How did you find out about the gold?’

‘Kinda when Saddam got captured and interrogated.’ He slapped my back with a smile. ‘But that’s history now. Today we start making the future the way we want it to be.’

‘So how does that happen? Where does the gold go? You got the plane – that means there’s others involved. Why don’t we know about them?’

Once we lifted the gold we were taking it to an airstrip equidistant between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, used by both cities’ VIPs. Aircraft could come and go without their famous or infamous passengers getting noticed, which wouldn’t have been the case at the two cities’ main airports.

There were others involved, of course, and he wouldn’t tell Red Ken and Dex about them. It worried me that they didn’t seem to care.

Spag looked at me through his gigs; no expression and no answers.

‘Who’s buying the gold?’

He displayed a set of nicotine-stained teeth. ‘Know what? Red said you weren’t that happy about the deal. But you’re asking a lot of questions you don’t need to know the answers to. That kinda gives me the shakes, Nick.’

‘I like to know what I’m getting involved with, that’s all.’

‘If you need to know anything, go ask Red.’ He nodded over towards the tee. ‘It’s waiting.’

17

Dex laughed at me as I sort of lined up my shot. The only time I’d hit a golf ball before, it had involved getting it through a windmill and into a clown’s mouth. It flew way off to the left into a patch of wasteground. It made even Red Ken’s look good.

Dex was loving it. ‘Maybe your handicap should be thirty balls, not thirty strokes.’

Spag put his club into his bag and manoeuvred his fat frame into the buggy. ‘Fuck it, who cares? It gets us moving and out of earshot. I’ve got plenty of balls, we’ll just throw one out for him.’

We rattled over the immaculate lawns towards their balls. In the middle distance, yachts sailed past on their way down the Creek. Shiny steel-and-glass monoliths lined the drags like rows of giant dominoes.

Red Ken’s had landed on a decent bit of grass. We parked in the shade of a clump of palm trees and he shaped up to it.

Spag was straight down to business. ‘Red, you got anything new to tell me?’

‘No. Today is about getting Nick up to speed. Same as we would have with Tenny. We then keep our cover going tomorrow morning. Prep in the afternoon, and lift tomorrow night. Make the RV and then back for one more round before flying back to UK.’

Spag pointed a porky finger. ‘Enough with the bullet points – I need to know the plan, in detail.’

Red Ken selected another club. ‘All you’ve got to know is that we’ll be at the RV and we’ll have the doors.’

The plane would be at the airstrip at 0130 hours Friday morning, and would stay on the ground for thirty minutes. Spag said air-traffic control had it logged in as a normal private flight, carrying out a drop-off.

I put my hand up. ‘I have a question.’

Dex was out of his buggy and peering up the fairway like an explorer, throwing up bits of grass in the non-existent wind.

Red Ken and Spag said it together: ‘What?’

‘How do I get my money?’

Dex turned back, swinging a club from the bottom end. ‘It’s all sorted, chappie. Spag has given us all half a bar USD as a down-payment. Tenny wasn’t too keen on having his share in advance, while he was still serving our noble Queen.’

Red Ken motioned him on. ‘Oi, shit for brains. Get on with it.’

Dex enjoyed insults, but only from friends. ‘So I’ve been holding his money, and that’s yours now, of course.’

‘Sounds good – but how and when do we get the rest?’

‘Everything’s organized.’ Dex went to high-five Spag as he sat in his buggy but got nothing in return. ‘This chap is going to transfer the cash into an EBT – employees’ beneficial trust – within three days. It’s the same vehicle those naughty bankers use to move their multi-million-dollar bonuses out of harm’s way. Everything’s good, everything’s legal. And that’s why we love you, isn’t it?’

Red Ken had taken his second shot and it wasn’t much better than his first. He hurled the club back into his bag. ‘Dex is right. It’s all legit, son. You’ll have no funny money to deal with. If you take it into the UK, they’re going to want to tax you – that’s how legal it is. How do you think I got my Merc? The system works.’

‘But where’s that money come from? Like the sirloin here just said, he’s a facilitator. He makes things happen. So who’s the Kobe beef – you know, the banker – coughing up a shed-load of cash just for us to be on the job? Haven’t you bothered to ask? Lads, what the fuck’s going on?’

Dex put his arm round Spag. ‘Our chubby little friend won’t tell us, and I, for one, do not care who our banker is. But this chap here, he knows that if our money isn’t in the EBTs within three days bad things will happen. Don’t you, old chap?’

Red Ken had recovered from his disappointment. ‘He knows we’ll find him.’

I was sure they would, but that didn’t help me know what I wanted to know.

Dex slapped Spag on the shoulder and headed for his buggy. I had expected Spag to do his nut by now, but he kept his cool as we all mounted up and headed for his ball. I even saw him smile a little as he drove.

Once the four buggies were parked up around the ball, Spag was back on the case. ‘Remember, the pilot will keep it on the ground for no more than thirty minutes. If you ain’t there, the deal’s off.’

‘Load of shite. You’ll stay there. Anyway, we’ve never missed an RV.’

My arse was getting sweaty on the PVC. ‘We carrying weapons?’

Spag almost jumped out of his skin. ‘What the fuck? No weapons!’

Dex pulled out a club for him, wanting to get on with the game. ‘He’s right, Nick. If we need them, we won’t be doing the job correctly.’

Red Ken agreed.

Dex handed Spag a club. ‘Here you go, Tiger. Let’s move on. Got another seventeen holes after this one.’

Spag’s shot flew straight and true towards the flag, just as a couple of grass-cutters, Indian lads with bits of cloth wound round their heads and necks against the sun, moved into view. ‘Hey, fore! Get out the fucking way! Jee-sus, these assholes!’

Red Ken shot out an arm and gripped him. ‘Wind your fucking neck in! These people sweat their guts out sixteen hours a day, six days a week – all for eight dollars a day. Dubai is being built by these slaves while all the fucking overweight local babies just whinge and whine.’

Spag pushed past to get to his buggy. ‘Don’t give me that bullshit. You don’t think the Mexicans are treated badly in New York City? And you Brits had slaves living in basements for hundreds of years.’ His tic had kicked off and the moustache started to twitch. ‘Fuck, Red, you people built entire cities on the proceeds of the slave trade, so don’t lecture me. Look at the positives. You have any idea what this country does for its own people?’

He started ticking off the benefits on his fingers. ‘Free education up to PhD level. Free houses when they get married. Free health care. Even their phone calls are free. Everybody has a maid, a nanny, a driver – you name it, they’ve got it. They don’t even pay taxes. Shit, of course this is a fucking great place for Emiratis. Thirty years ago these people were living in tents, scratching around for water – and now look at the place.’

Red Ken’s face was purple. He took a pace and moved it right into the American’s. ‘It’s Disneyland.’ He pointed at the workers sheltering under some trees. ‘These fuckers’ passports are taken away when they arrive, and some of them don’t get paid for months. They’ve got families back in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, wherever the fuck they come from, starving while they wait for money that was promised but never arrives.

‘And do their embassies help them? They get jack shit from anyone. They can’t even go home because they’re in debt – they had to pay some greedy twat to get the job in the first place. And nobody wants to do anything about it because everybody’s making money. This place is shite, end of story.’

Spag shook his head so hard that sweat flew off it. ‘You self-righteous asshole. You just don’t get what this place is about, do you? Every Arab, Egyptian, Libyan, Iranian, whatever, they all grow up saying, “I want to go to Dubai.” This place is showing the rest of the Arabs how a modern Muslim country works.

‘They’ve got no fundamentalism here. On that basis alone, outsiders like you should shut the fuck up. You should be very worried if this model fails. It’ll end up being run by the fucking Taliban. That’s why the West turns a blind eye to how they treat their workers and all the other shit that happens here. So why don’t you just get on with your job then go back to wherever makes you happy? Or will you be down at the workers’ camps, handing out your share of the profits? I don’t think so.’

Dex had taken his shot and was leaning on his club. ‘Either calm down or go and get a room.’

Red Ken lit a Benson & Hedges and turned away.

Spag eased himself into his buggy and pointed the wheels back towards the Bedouin tent. ‘Fuck you.’ The electric motor kicked in and he drove off. ‘Just make sure you’re on time.’

Dex patted Red Ken on the shoulder with his club handle. ‘So when are you up for director of Liberty? That Shami Chakrabarti girl needs to watch out, eh? Can’t wait to see you on Question Time.’

Red Ken wasn’t seeing the funny side. He walked towards me. ‘Doesn’t it piss you off?’

‘Don’t know enough about it, mate. I’m used to being treated like shit, but I can see these lads get it a whole lot worse.’

Dex came to join us. ‘Well done, Red, you got rid of him a lot quicker this time.’

Red Ken wasn’t in the mood for praise. ‘That’s him fucked off until the airstrip RV. Let’s get on with it. Listen in, we got six crates to lift, right?’

We both nodded and I guessed what was coming.

‘Well, we’re going to have one for ourselves. I don’t trust the twat – and, besides, we’re here for us. You both OK with that?’

Dex was more than happy, but it wasn’t that simple.

‘How do we lift it? How do we hide it? I presume we come back later for it?’

‘Correct. I got a wagon parked up at the airport among those three thousand vehicles. Me and Chrissie just binned it when we left. We load it up, re-park it, and come back later. Then we melt it down and sell it.’

They’d only agreed with Spag about not having weapons, Red Ken said, because they already had some. ‘If it all goes tits up, we ain’t rotting in some fucking Arab jail. We’re going to get out of this shit, spend the cash – or die trying.’ He shared eye to eye with Dex. ‘It’s do or die, isn’t it, mate?’

Dex looked at me and for the first time there wasn’t a smile. ‘It’s our time. Our one chance to change our lives for ever. Make or break. If it doesn’t work, we’re dead anyway. You OK with that? If not, maybe it’s time to rethink, Nick.’

I didn’t need time to re-anything. ‘No, I’m not OK. This is getting worse by the minute. Have you two really thought about what we’re involved with here? Have you approached this job like you would have done anything else we’ve been involved with?

‘Think about what that fat fuck might have up his sleeve. Think about all the details we don’t know. I’m here because I’m here, and I’ll stay with you two whatever. We’re mates, and mates stick together. But think about the risks. We can walk away any time we want to, lads.’

Red Ken climbed into his buggy. ‘I’m not walking away from anything, son. I can’t. There’s too much at stake for me.’

Dex followed. ‘Come on, Nick. Let’s finish playing golfers, and then we can get to work. You have a lot of recces to do.’

18

Mall of the Emirates

1450 hrs

The mall felt like Monaco with a roof on, only bigger. All the usual international suspects were there, from a Carrefour hypermarket that took up half the ground floor to Asprey, Rolex and hundreds of others in between. To make Brit tourists feel at home, it even had an indoor funfair a few escalators up, complete with bumper cars and fluffy toys.

Most bizarre of all was the world’s biggest indoor ski slope. A huge steel cocoon towered over the car park and taxi drop-off point on the roof. Inside, I imagined, Arabs were skiing in dishdashes under Versace Puffa jackets, but I hadn’t got to see it yet. After the golf game we’d gone to the hotel for a quick shower, then straight out again. Ken and I were now busy keeping up with Dex as he bounced from one perfume shop to another.

We’d had a white Toyota behind us all the way from the hotel to the mall, a good twenty-minute drive. Not unusual on its own, as the mall was one of the city’s major venues. But it was three up, all Arab males in Western dress, and they’d stuck to us like glue. We’d soon see if we’d been pinged, and maybe by whom. It could be UAE internal security – or Spag’s people keeping tabs on us. Right now, it didn’t matter who. What did was confirming that we were targets and then deciding what to do about it.

‘Doesn’t anyone here sell Amouage Homage?’

‘They must do – it’s the most expensive perfume on the planet. Nick and me’ll go and ask at McDonald’s.’

I followed Red Ken as Dex disappeared into yet another shop. He shook his head. ‘A whole field of rose petals to produce a teardrop of the stuff. They make it in Oman. I bought Chrissie some and she went crazy about it. I think that’s where Dickhead got the idea. He’s trying to get Cinza back.’ Red Ken smiled at me. ‘Can you see the one with the checked shirt? He still about?’

We headed for the food court.

‘Nope. He could have gone with Dex.’

There had been a young guy, maybe mid-twenties, who hadn’t got past Surveillance 101. He was always getting in our eye-line. Either he was bad, or we just happened to share exactly the same shopping preferences.

‘We’ll soon find out, Nick. Not that it’s going to make a difference to me. Fuck ’em, whoever they are.’ Red Ken led me past the falafel and vegetarian joints. ‘He really is soft in the head, that lad. You can’t just bribe women back – and don’t I know it.’

We reached the counter and ordered Big Macs. We didn’t check for anyone or anything yet. There was no need – we’d soon see if someone had a trigger on us once we sat down. Besides, we didn’t even know for sure we were being followed. And if we were, we didn’t want to look aware.

‘Dex want anything?’

‘He won’t touch any of this shite. I’ll get him an orange juice.’

We carried our trays to the seating area and sat each side of the table to maximize our view of the hall. Three women on the next table were burqa’d up in black gear. Each time one of them brought food to her mouth she had to lift the beak and try to post it through without leaving a blob of mayonnaise on the flap of the letterbox.

Beyond them, a table-load of local kids were busier texting than eating. On our other side, two overweight American lads with goatee beards, ball caps and overalls emblazoned with an energy company logo and the Stars and Stripes were making up for them, in supersize.

Women of all races paraded around us in short, strapless dresses. A couple of hours down the road in Saudi it would have been a capital offence. There were a lot of girls down that way with mayo stains round their letterboxes.

I reached for my Pepsi. No Coke here: most of the Middle East seemed to think Coca-Cola was a Jewish company.

As on the aircraft, there was no talking shop while we were around others. ‘What made you get out of here so quick, mate?’ I was thinking about the abandoned vehicle. ‘Just that Chrissie didn’t like it?’

He took the top off his drink and rejected the straw I offered. ‘The whole expat lifestyle. The way they treat these lads-’ He nodded in the direction of the Filipinos sweating at a stir-fry counter. ‘Me and Chrissie, we’re from shite. Our dads were both down the pit. They had principles. Socialism rubs off, you know. Seeing these people treated so badly pissed us both off. She couldn’t handle it.’

He took a bite out of his burger. ‘I said we’d bin it – but maybe just another month or two to get some money together.’ He over-concentrated on the tabletop all of a sudden. ‘She had a breakdown. It wasn’t just the being here… it was a culmination of years of me fucking off working. I was just too engrossed in what I was doing to see it coming.’

He raised his paper napkin to his eye, trying to persuade me that he had a bit of grit in it. ‘We left, but it was too late. She binned me. I should have listened to her. I fucked up, mate – forgot there was another life, something more important.’

He looked at his Big Mac and put it down. He’d lost the taste for it. He sat back with his arms on the table, his hands squeezed together. ‘I kidded myself I was doing all my soldiering for them. Creating a family, putting together a nest egg. But guess what? It was all for me, because I loved it. Now it’s make or break. My last job – and this time it’s for Chrissie. No more bullshit. I’m going to get some of the good stuff and give it the big fuck-off to everyone else – including you and Dex. It’s end-ex for me.’

Red Ken couldn’t pull off the grit act any more. Tears welled in both eyes. ‘From now on, it’s going to be about her. I’ll go down on my hands and knees at the christening if I have to, if it means she’ll have me back.’

I watched a tear dribble down the crags in his cheek. ‘Is that why you left everything to the Fat Controller?’

He sort of nodded, and at the same time waved his finger in front of his face. He was right: no work talk. ‘Believe me, son, I’m desperate. Without Chrissie, I’ve got nothing. I want her back. I want my kids and grandkids to have a good life. Not a shite one like I’ve given to Chrissie. If this doesn’t work…’

I cut away from it a moment to scan for Checked Shirt. ‘What about Dex? Why’s he taking the risk?’

‘Because he’s soft in the head, that’s why. You know him. One minute he’s here for the fucking juice, and the next – who knows? He’s been talking about moving to Scotland and buying a castle, but that was last week.’

Red Ken looked over my shoulder and nodded. I turned to see Dex empty-handed.

‘For all that, I’m glad he’s here. You too, Nick. I just wish Tenny was too, you know?’

Dex bounced in and sat next to me. He studied Red Ken’s face. ‘You OK, chap? Nick here been stealing your chips?’

Red Ken wiped his eyes. ‘No, you soft twat – just the normal thing.’

‘Ah.’ Dex pointed at the carton full of juice. ‘That mine?’

He gulped it back with relish, then leant forward with that ever-bright smile. ‘Guess what? We’re being followed. The checked shirt stayed with me. So, what now?’

Red Ken took a swig of his drink. ‘Fuck ’em. We’re just shopping, aren’t we? So we carry on doing what we’re here to do – show Nick what he needs to see, and carry on as planned. We finish our drinks, get on with our job, and keep our eyes skinned.’

19

Dex had some bits of orange caught in his straw and was trying to blow them out instead of just taking the top off and drinking normally.

Red Ken thumped his watch. ‘We need to go up to the car park.’

Dex gave it some thought. ‘I’ll bring it with – and I see Checked Shirt. He’s sitting to my half-right, outside Starbucks. He’s talking with a white shirt, long-sleeved, buttoned-up, jeans. It’s a trigger.’

We got up and started walking, ignoring the two of them. We passed through the funfair, where Indian and Filipina girls stared out from behind the stalls. They looked as though they were in prison.

It’s best not to look for followers while on the move. It’s too obvious and not necessary. The best way is to check things out once you go static. Who was there the last time you stopped? Who just fucked up by jumping into a shop doorway?

We came to a massive floor-to-ceiling glass screen, the other side of which was Switzerland. Acres of blindingly white snow glittered under a brilliant blue sky. Chairlifts carried skiers over snowmen and tall fir trees. You could almost smell the gluhwein. We stopped and had a quick look at all the Arab lads wrapped up in their hired cold-weather gear. As usual, the women in burqas had drawn the short straw. They couldn’t get the skiwear on over their other clobber. Their breath hung around them in clouds as they waited at the bottom of the toboggan run for their kids to appear at warp speed. They must have been freezing.

Dex took another suck from his juice container. ‘They’re still with us, chaps. They really need to sharpen their skills.’

We turned to walk away from the skiers. He was right. The two of them were directly in our eye-line, trying to look normal as they window-shopped for women’s clothes.

We took the escalator to the roof and walked out into forty degrees of overwhelming heat. Like any other mall on the planet, a queue of people with shopping bags stretched back from the taxi rank. There must have been space in the car park for at least a thousand cars, but only a third of it was occupied.

‘Recession.’ Dex shook his head as well as his drink. ‘It’s everywhere.’

The sun was low in the sky. Red Ken checked his watch. ‘Ten past six. Last light in about fifty.’

We moved into the shade of the ski slope. It ran up the side of the mall and above the car park to dominate the skyline. We admired all the massed ranks of sparkling 4x4s and Lamborghinis, and tried to look like we were waiting for someone to join us.

Neither of the shirts made an appearance. Red Ken pulled out his cigarettes and I admired the scenery. ‘They can’t be that shite. We’re up here for one of two reasons. To get a taxi, or meet someone with a vehicle. Bet they’ve gone back to the Toyota. They’ll be staking out the exit.’ I turned to the click of a disposable lighter and was met with a cloud of smoke.

‘Good. Fuck ’em. Let them wait. Dex, you keep an eye out for them. Nick, look out there.’

From our vantage-point, the area round the mall was littered with patches of barren ground and half-finished buildings draped in scaffolding. Over the constant background rumble of traffic came the rhythmic thud of pile drivers. Little ant-like bodies scurried about in yellow or blue hard hats. It must have been a fucker labouring in Gas Mark Ten.

The whole city was criss-crossed with highways that looked like giant concrete flumes. A monorail was also under construction. We had seen the elevated strip of concrete heading towards the city centre from the airport. The partly built stations looked like golden cocoons wrapped around the track. Red Ken, of course, thought they were shite. I quite liked them.

We could see all the way to the sea. The Burj Al-Arab hotel looked like a giant sail a couple of K away on the coast. The needle-like Burj Dubai was well on its way to being the world’s tallest building. In all directions, the rows of dominoes gleamed in the sun. But we weren’t there for the view.

He leant against one of the concrete supports for the ski slope and sucked hard on his B &H. ‘Dunes. You got it?’

The hotel, like a black glass pyramid, would have looked at home in Las Vegas.

‘Got that.’

‘OK, that’s your axis. Go half right. Five hundred.’ He was using a fire-control order format to get me onto the target. I looked half right, scanning the five-hundred area.

‘You’ve got a ten-storey building with an all-black ground floor. Seen?’

‘Seen.’ The boring ten-storey cube’s shop fronts were all black marble.

‘OK, go left of the building, into the wasteground, at about a K. You’ve got a one-storey flat-concrete-roofed building – rectangular, with a wall surrounding it. Seen?’

‘Seen.’

‘That’s the target. The surrounding wall is five metres away from the building. The wall is three metres high and the wall gate and building shutters are facing us. All the damage we do must be within the wall, inside the compound. That way it’ll be months, maybe years, before anyone gets to see our handiwork. And when they do, they won’t even know what was in the building. The outside wall will not be touched.’

I couldn’t see much detail from this distance but I had a visual on what Red Ken and Dex had described to me. We couldn’t do a walk-past to soak up more detail. No one walked in this city.

20

The perimeter gate, the only way in and out of the compound, directly faced a doorway set into rolled-steel shutters wide enough to admit a vehicle into the building. Either side of the shutters was a window, the one on the right larger than the one on the left. I couldn’t see from this distance, but Red Ken said they were iron-barred. He and Dex had been on-target during their last recce. There were no other entrances or exits.

There was no electricity or water running into the building. It had been left to decay for the past nine years, waiting for Saddam to defeat the Americans and then get down to a bit of DIY on his palace.

‘Nick, make a note of the main drag between us and the target. That’s our route out. Going left, as we look at it now, it takes us south-west out of the city, following the coast towards Abu Dhabi and the RV. Going right, we take the tunnel under the Creek into the old quarter, the gold souk and markets. You got it?’

‘Yep.’

The job was kicking off at last light tomorrow. For Red Ken and me, it would start in a block of public toilets in the old quarter. Dex was going to go local and steal a Tata truck in the same area they’d pinged with a crane attached, much like the ones Jewson’s used to deliver bricks and stuff in the UK.

Red Ken and I would keep out of sight as we moved to the target. We’d lift the crates, load them onto the truck, then take a swift detour to Dex’s GMC Suburban, parked about six K west of the target. After transferring our little insurance policy, we’d take the Tata and the Suburban back to the airport before catching up with Spag at the strip.

Bingo.

It was perfectly simple. Too fucking simple by half.

I reckoned it was time for one or two awkward questions. ‘So, these Gucci gold doors have just been sitting there since the second Gulf War – and nobody knows?’

‘They will when the developers move in. Five years ago this was the Empty Quarter. Now look at it.’

A flood of tourists spilt out of the mall, designer bags bulging with stuff they could have bought back home, and probably for less.

‘Spag said he found out about the doors just after the war.’

‘Yeah, he told me.’

‘Did he also tell you he found the lads who made them?’

‘No, he fucked me off on questions. Told me to ask you.’

Red Ken nearly choked on his next mouthful of nicotine. ‘The guy in charge locked the crates in that building for Saddam to collect as soon as he’d sorted out the Americans.’

‘And the others?’

‘Two of them, apparently. Spag reckons he binned them – permanently – in case they confused the gold with their pension scheme.’

‘Then Spag binned him, and it’s been sitting there ever since?’

Red Ken nodded. ‘Just waiting for the right time.’

‘The right time for Spag, or for some other fucker?’

‘Who knows?’ He checked his watch again. ‘You OK, Nick? Seen enough?’

‘Yeah.’

‘We’ll follow the route backwards to the gold market. See where the weapons are and where Dex will lift the truck.’

We wandered over to the cab rank. Dex jumped into the front of the first available and greeted the driver like an old cricketing companion. We headed down the ramp to meet the white Toyota, three up.

21

We drove towards the Creek about four or five K away. The main drag really was main. Four lanes in both directions cut through the city. It was pointless checking if the Toyota was still behind us. We’d wait until we stopped, just as we did on foot. These guys weren’t complete amateurs. They must have had some training or they’d have stayed with us on the mall roof. But if they were internal security, police, whoever, why tag us? Was it because we’d been with Spag this morning? Maybe they’d been following him, seen us meet and decided to find out who we were and what we were doing.

Whatever, I didn’t like it. The job felt compromised before we’d even begun. A big part of me wanted to get these lads to call the whole thing off, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen.

We fell silent as we thought about the job and the Toyota. Well, maybe just Red Ken and I did. I had no idea what was going on in Dex’s head. But then neither did he.

We drove through the tunnel and followed the Creek towards the sea. Knackered old dhows were parked five and six deep all along the harbour front while their crews unloaded fridges and all sorts straight onto the pavement.

Dex gave the driver a tap on the shoulder. ‘We’ll stop here, chappie. Thank you very much.’

Red Ken and I got out and left Dex to pay. The Toyota passed us and disappeared down a side turning. The lads would be jumping out any minute to keep with us. We both checked to see if any other cars were doing the same. Maybe they had a team with us, or maybe they’d split when we were all pinged together at the golf course this morning. We did the tourist bit, watching the locals work their arses off unloading and then dicing with death as they barrowed everything, including the kitchen sink, to the shops on the other side of the road.

The sun cast long shadows as it began to bin it for the day. Lights were already on in the shops. Street signs flickered into life, and I started to feel the energy of the place. Night-time was when Dubai began to hop. Who but dickhead tourists wanted to wander around in the sun?

Red Ken tapped my shoulder. ‘There’s the subway. Get into the toilet block and do your stuff. We’ll wait here, see if the team have pinged us yet.’

I wandered under the road. As I emerged the other side, I passed an enclosed steel-and-glass bus shelter with an air-conditioning unit on the roof. It must have been nice and cool for all the people who never used it because they all went by car. It was almost space age compared with the place I was going.

I could smell the flat-roofed cube from several metres away. The cars around it looked as though they’d been abandoned rather than parked. The local dudes leant against the wall and smoked.

I went inside.

The place was boiling hot and stank exactly like a shit-hole full of tobacco smoke should. The two sinks were cracked. The taps were broken. There were four cubicles, and only one was being used. I always thought the hole in the ground with a hosepipe to sluice your arse was a better system than ours, apart from the squatting bit. There’s quite an art in keeping your jeans and slack belt out of the firing line.

Above my head, to the right of the entrance, was a ledge on which sat an ancient air-conditioning system, a plastic box caked in grime that probably hadn’t sparked up since this place was declared open – about twenty years ago, the same time it had last been cleaned.

I watched the shadow under the occupied cubicle door. The bloke was still squatting. I eased myself up against the wall. If anybody came in, I’d stop what I was doing and leg it.

I stood on the tips of my toes, and stretched up my hand as Red Ken had instructed. The ledge was shaped like a tray for the air-con unit. My fingertips brushed the taped-up plastic bag and the hard steel it contained. Red Ken’s three pistols were still where they should be. Now I knew precisely where they were we could head towards the old gold market and the wagon Dex would lift tomorrow night.

22

A mountain of sacks, crates and plastic-wrapped white goods covered every square metre of pavement. Indian lads loaded up with cargo ran up and down the line of dhows like they were stepping-stones. As we headed deeper into the old part of town we mostly had to stick to the road.

Once past the main offloading point, we could see the lights of Ye Olde Dubai across the Creek. Swarms of water-taxis waited to ply you over to the purpose-built tourist trap sited right opposite the real deal.

The two shirts were behind us, on the town side of the road.

Red Ken was deep in thought. He fished out his cigarettes and Dex and I took a couple of brisk paces to get ahead of his smoke cloud. ‘What are we going to do with them?’

I shrugged. There wasn’t much we should do right now. ‘They know where we’re staying. If they lose us they’ll go and wait for us there. We might as well keep playing tourist until tomorrow night. Then we ditch them and get on with the job.’

Dex nodded. ‘And then, Red, I think we should consider missing out on the Friday-morning golf. We should get an earlier flight.’

Red Ken took a big drag and, a moment or two later, smoke seemed to curl out of every hole in his head. ‘Agreed.’

‘I’m going to keep saying it, lads. You sure you still want to go on? We’ve just picked up another problem, something else we have no control of, and-’

‘Save your breath, son.’ Red Ken moved forward a little and slapped Dex between the shoulder-blades. ‘Right, boy? Still got your eye on that castle?’

Dex turned and grasped his hand. ‘Definitely.’

There was a lot going on there that obviously went beyond words. I felt a little jealous, and pissed off with myself at the same time. These two and Tenny had made the effort to stay tight all these years. ‘What’s all this Monarch of the Glen shit?’

Dex gave a smile that seemed more wistful than his normal don’t-give-a-fuck version. ‘It’s not shit, Nick. I’ve been thinking a lot about my father lately. The night before I went to Eton, he sat me down and gave me just one piece of advice. It’s something I’ve never forgotten.’ The smile faded. He was lost in another world. His voice deepened. ‘“Son, the only way for people like us to succeed in this country is by keeping our heads below the parapet. Laugh, be the happy chappie. Don’t let anyone see you’re cleverer than they are. If you do, you’ll become a threat.”’

We walked some more. ‘And you know what, chaps? He was right. I was the class clown all through school. They called me the Wacky Paki and I crept in under the wire and was top of the class before they knew it.’

We stopped and looked across the hundred metres of Creek. The lights of Ye Olde Dubai danced on the water.

‘And then I joined the RAF, just like my dad. He flew Hurricanes, as you know. They called him Curry-in-a-Hurry. He was brilliant at putting on the smiley face, but in his head he was giving everybody the finger. I’ve done the same, but I’m fed up with smiling now. I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to become a Scottish laird. I’m going to buy the title. I’ve got a castle in mind.’ He looked at Red Ken. ‘Five acres when the tide’s out…’

He came in on cue: ‘… three when it’s in!’

They laughed.

‘I’m going to invent a McWacky-Paki tartan and join Gleneagles and the Royal and Ancient. Two fingers up to the lot of them. One for me, one for my father. He’d be proud of what I’m doing here. I’m going to have the last laugh, something he never had the good fortune to have.’ Dex put a hand on my shoulder. ‘And you, Nick? There has to be something more than just cash.’

‘There is – I told you. I’m here to cover your arses.’

Red Ken flicked his butt into the Creek. ‘Nearly there. You see the compound?’

Seventy or eighty metres ahead of us stood a construction site that took up the entire centre of the road. Diversions and temporary traffic-lights funnelled the traffic into one lane.

I was the only one who looked. Too many eyes on one point at the same time would prompt the boys behind us to ask, ‘What the fuck are they all looking at, and why?’

Red Ken stopped and made a meal of firing up his latest B &H. ‘This whole area is being regenerated. They’re going to tart up the promenade road like the Corniche the other side, make it all Gucci. And that’s where Dex lifts our wagon.’

Above the blue-painted wooden perimeter walls, I could see Portakabins stacked four or five high, linked by wooden staircases. Cranes reached up into the sky. Arrows and strips of yellow-and-white plastic tape guided us away from the Creek and around the construction site.

‘That’s if the wagon we want is still there, of course. This is our final recce, so it had better be.’

The site entrance was floodlit. A dozen or so lads squatted on their haunches in the dust around a kettle on a propane burner. A hut that looked like a garden shed provided the only security. Its windows and door were open because of the heat. The guard was watching one of the Indian star channels that played Bollywood 24/7. Flies bounced around in the light.

We let Dex check the place out as we passed the fire station on the opposite side of the road.

‘Everything’s fine, chaps. Three Tatas on parade, present and correct.’

23

The souk was a collection of narrow pedestrian streets covered by a corrugated roof. To create some kind of air flow, domestic fans had been screwed into each of the supporting pillars. It was packed with brightly lit shops, each with five or six bored-looking Indians sitting behind the counters watching TV. Every window was filled with shiny gold headdresses and belts, and the sort of breastplates they used for weddings out here.

Dex pointed excitedly. ‘I’m going to pop into this one. Look at the name.’ The shop was called Baghdad. That was where Dex had won his DFC, flying into a contact to pick up a wounded American infantryman. The Brits had wanted to bollock him for risking an airframe, but the Americans said if the Queen didn’t give him something, they would. That would have been very embarrassing.

Red Ken and I carried on walking. ‘See you down by the junction.’

He shook his head. ‘He wants to take Cinza to that ridiculous castle. Like I said, soft in the head, that one.’

I caught a glimpse of the checked and white shirts. They had split up, one on each side of the road.

Red Ken had pinged them as well. ‘Fuck ’em, Nick. We’ll deal with them when we have to.’ He pointed back to Baghdad. ‘You know what? She actually likes him. Both of them are nuts. They suit each other.’

‘He buying a ring?’

‘Been trying since the funeral. He can never find the right one, and then when he does, he forgets her finger size. He’s all over the place.’

A group of Indian guys were suddenly all over us like a rash, trying to herd us towards a once-in-a-lifetime bargain. ‘Buy watch, very good? OK Rolex, OK Breitling…’

‘Not today, mate.’

Dex reappeared and they descended on him instead. ‘I’m all right for Rolexes, chaps.’ He lifted his wrist to show a few thousand quid’s worth of chronograph. ‘Already got a real one!’

It was all good tourist banter. We were blending in.

The next assault was launched by guys with trays of cold cans and bottles. This time we were buyers. We stood under a fan and swigged our cans of Fanta. White Shirt followed suit beside a pillar about fifty away. Checked Shirt disappeared down one of the alleyways the watch-sellers wanted to lure us along. They weren’t doing too bad. They’d learnt a thing or two since the mall.

Red Ken took a couple of gulps and moved his head from side to side in the draught from the fan. ‘OK, listen in. We have a walk round, buy some tourist shite and head for a curry before we go back to the hotel. Tomorrow morning we play golf. If these lads stay with us, they’ll have a trigger from the clubhouse – they’re shite, but not so shite they’ll try and follow us round the course. So that’ll give me time to leg it, go get my wagon and position it for tomorrow night. Questions?’

I had plenty. But nothing I had said so far had had any effect, so I kept my mouth shut.

Something in a shop window grabbed Dex’s attention. ‘Now that really is something…’

Red Ken groaned.

‘No, Red, I mean really – behind the counter…’

We looked past the mountains of gold to a digital display. It took me a second to realize it was quoting gold prices in a comprehensive range of different currencies. $27,865 USD. That was about 3K lower than the price at Tenny’s funeral.

‘Fuck me, lads,’ Red Ken said. ‘We’d better get a move on.’

24

Mall of the Emirates

Thursday, 30 April

1737 hrs

The taxi stopped off by the rank opposite the Virgin Megastore and I jumped out. Under my arm I had a shirt and a pair of flip-flops wrapped up in one of the hotel’s plastic laundry bags. The white Toyota peeled away and pulled into the valet-parking area. I leant back in to ask the boys whether they were absolutely sure they wanted to carry on.

Red Ken didn’t even wait for me to open my mouth. ‘Wheels already turning, son. We’re past the point of no return.’

‘OK.’ I nodded. ‘Good luck.’

I closed the cab door and tapped the roof as it drove away.

Harvey Nichols and Debenhams faced each other and took up three storeys of the mall. I headed between them, towards the huge Carrefour hypermarket. I grabbed a trolley and pushed it through the automatic barrier. If it hadn’t been for the burqas, I could have been on the outskirts of Paris or Marseille. It was a one-stop shop for everything from milk to laptops.

I played around with the mobiles and Nintendo games while I waited. It wasn’t long before I spotted Checked Shirt, only today he was in plain blue. He mooched along the store front the other side of the barrier, casting down the aisles for his target. I let him get on with it. When I saw him turn back into the throng of people moving up and down the mall I knew he’d pinged me. He knew I wasn’t going anywhere. Now that I was in, I could only exit through one of the checkouts. He could sit back and keep the trigger. Maybe somebody else would come in later on to see what I was up to.

We’d been followed from the moment we’d left the hotel. This time it was a two-car team: the Toyota and a dark blue Mazda saloon. Going by the way they operated, I was pretty sure they’d been trained by the Brits. They used the same stake-out procedures and trigger techniques.

This morning we’d played another round of golf at the same club, but instead of a buggy each this time Red Ken and Dex shared. Red Ken left us on the sixth tee, which was out of line-of-sight of the clubhouse. He’d collected the Suburban from the airport, rattled it off to the RV and got back while we were still fucking about on the fifteenth.

Checked Shirt had come into the clubhouse as we signed in, just to see if we were meeting anyone. As soon as he saw it was just us on the greens, he went and sat at a table in the corner. They couldn’t come out and follow us round the golf course. All they could do was hole up and put the trigger on where we’d come back.

They’d followed us back to the hotel. If our rooms were bugged, they’d have been disappointed. There was no planning, no talking. We’d done all that on the golf course where nobody could hear us.

I moved further into Carrefour. By now Red Ken would have arrived at the Bur Juman Centre, another of Dubai’s fifty-odd malls. They were the only places we were able to walk around and where we were guaranteed crowd cover. The streets were empty apart from Indians or Filipinos on their way to work.

The plan was now to split up and for each of us to lose his tag. Then we’d RV in the old quarter to carry on with the job as planned. Once Red Ken had dropped him off, Dex wasn’t heading for a mall. He was going to the street markets. He had clothes to buy so he could make like a local and go and nick the wagon.

I was moving down the aisles of pots and pans when White Shirt made an appearance. He wasn’t there long. His job would be to confirm I was still in the store, that I wasn’t meeting anybody, and that if I was, to decide whether they had to follow them as well.

25

I moved from pots and pans to bags: schoolbags, shopping bags, suitcases, rucksacks and day-sacks. I picked up a Day-Glo orange one and threw it in the trolley. In the camping-gear section I added a head-torch. Toiletries and first aid were next. I threw in a pack of surgical gloves. White Shirt shadowed me for a while, checking I was doing what I was doing rather than meeting anybody for a brush contact to exchange information.

He didn’t follow as I turned past a group of Europeans checking out iPods. He crossed into the next aisle. I carried on to the checkout. I’d lost him by then; I didn’t know where he was. There was no need to look. If he had any sense he’d wait within sight of the exit.

I paid cash, put everything in the day-sack and headed out into the mall. Again, there was no need to look. I didn’t want to show I was aware.

I headed for the escalator to the first floor. One of them would probably come with me, but not until I was at the top and about to step off. You don’t go on an escalator with your target in case they turn around and ping you.

He would wait until I was ‘temporary unsighted’ – perhaps because I turned a corner and was out of view until he did the same – and if he and his mate had any brain cells, they’d try and get ahead of me via the fire-escape stairs or another escalator. But I wasn’t going to let that happen. As soon as I hit the first floor, I moved right and headed for the toilets.

I took a cubicle and locked myself in. There was a gap of about forty centimetres under the door. I sat, feet up, on a very comfortable European toilet seat, surrounded by glossy marble and stainless steel. Everything smelt wonderful. I whipped off my Timberlands and socks and rolled up my cargos then shoved on the flip-flops, put my feet on the floor, and waited.

I hadn’t yet made it look like I was trying to lose them. They’d be checking the immediate vicinity for the VDM, my orange day-sack. They’d be looking through the crowds, trying not to make themselves stick out by pushing people out of the way, all the clumsy stuff you see in films. When they didn’t find me, they’d check the men’s clothing stores, electrical shops and toilets. All they’d see under the door was a pair of white legs and flip-flops. I was now just one of the hundreds of European men in the mall who could be taking a dump in here – and not the one they were looking for.

Soon they’d have to make a decision. I was no longer just temporary unsighted. I was unsighted – and that was a nice way of saying they’d lost me.

Then what? They’d try to lock the place down. They’d need to put triggers on everyone coming out, but that just wasn’t possible. There were too many exits to have eyes-on. Maybe they’d go back and check the taxi ranks. But there wouldn’t be enough of them to go round. They’d have to go back to known locations – either the hotel or the golf club. They’d have to go themselves, or tell their mates to go and stake them out.

There were other known locations. We’d been cruising round the old quarter; we’d visited the gold souk. Maybe they’d check Baghdad and the Indian place we’d eaten at last night.

I sat right where I was as cisterns flushed either side of me and dads coaxed their kids to wash their hands. You didn’t have to be multilingual to understand what was going on out there.

I checked my watch. I’d been there nearly half an hour. It was time to move or I’d miss the RV with Red Ken and Dex. I put my boots back on, replaced my shirt with the dark blue one in the plastic bag and shoved my purchases into my pockets. I put the flip-flops and cream shirt in the day-sack and left it hanging on the back of the door.

I headed for Debenhams without glancing left or right, then down their internal escalator towards the ground-floor exit.

I was surrounded by people getting into cars or cabs, some in burqas, some in European summer dresses with half their tits hanging out.

The sun was sinking but I didn’t want to hit the taxi rank yet. The Toyota was still out there. I ducked back towards the building. It was still only one up. The lads inside the mall would have to make their decision soon.

The two shirts emerged. Checked was on his mobile, waving his free hand like a madman. White bollocked the driver, as if it was his fault they’d lost me.

They jumped into the car and took off, and I joined the taxi queue.

26

Last light

I went straight into the toilet block without hanging about. Dex was lifting the Tata. Red Ken would meet me opposite the construction site to back him if things went tits up. A guy in dishdash and sandals bent over the sink, a finger blocking each nostril in turn while he snorted snot from the other into a trickle of water. I headed for one of the cubicles. Glossy marble and stainless steel it wasn’t, and the smell was indescribable.

With my feet on the porcelain pads each side of the hole, I fished my docs and cash out of the dark blue Rohan trousers I’d chosen to match my long-sleeved shirt. They were wrapped in a hotel laundry bag. As soon as the snorter had left the block, I moved out and reached up to the ledge. My fingers found two more sets of docs up there, and the weapons gone. This was our final RV. We stored our means of escape here so we could go into the job sterile. All I had on me now was about six hundred dollars of on-the-run money.

It didn’t matter what I felt about the job now. It was happening. If I let myself think too much about what might go wrong, I’d end up paralysed.

I retraced my steps through the subway towards the Creek. I turned right as I came out, following exactly the same route as yesterday. Dhows were still tied up along the pavement, half a dozen deep. The Indian lads were still working their arses off in the dark.

I chose the ill-lit side of the road. As soon as the construction-site floodlights came into view I waited for a break in the traffic and crossed back.

Red Ken stood in the shadows by a massive set of roll shutters set into the wall of the fire station, fishing in his day-sack with rubber-gloved hands. ‘All right, son?’

I gave him a nod as I put on my surgical gloves and slipped the head-torch around my neck.

‘Here.’ He handed me a Taurus, a Brazilian version of the Colt. 8 Special. ‘It’s loaded.’ He pressed a speed loader into my palm. ‘Spare.’

I checked it. When I needed to reload, I would open the Taurus’s cylinder, push the bar, and the six empty cases would fall out. The speed loader had six rounds ready to drop into the chamber. All I had to do was press a button and the rounds would drop into position. I’d close the cylinder again and carry on firing. I slid the speed loader into a pocket in my Rohans and the weapon into my waistband. If we needed more than twelve rounds each to get out of the shit, we were really in it.

The lads hanging around by the main gate of the construction site didn’t look like they’d moved an inch since last night. The one in the guard hut was still watching something loud from Bollywood. Everyone else was busy brewing up.

Dex had been standing off somewhere in the darkness, keeping a trigger on Red Ken, waiting for me to arrive. Within the minute, he walked past us without a second glance. He looked like he’d done his clothes shopping in a skip instead of a street market. His short-sleeved shirt was ripped and the brown trousers held up with a plastic belt were caked with dust. His sandals slapped along the pavement. He smelt rancid from ten paces. He’d prepared well. Smells count.

Dex disappeared into the site.

I checked we were still in shadow, and spotted the sign above our heads. The building we were standing outside wasn’t just a fire station – it was also the police station and HQ for Civil Defence.

Red Ken saw me reading it. ‘Nobody said it would be easy, son.’

As if on cue, there was a blip of a siren and two green-and-whites pulled out of a side road. The police the other side of the tinted glass didn’t give us a second glance before turning right and speeding off down the main.

A Tata truck that had seen better days trundled out of the construction site. Not a single head turned as it nosed through the gate.

Red Ken and I started walking. The Tata pulled in about a hundred metres further down the road. A crane was mounted behind the cab, and a thick steel cable was attached to a chunky hook. Ten metres or so of webbing straps were wrapped around the mesh screen protecting the rear window.

I opened the door and eased myself into the footwell. Dex stared straight ahead. Red Ken came in on top of me, trying to lie flat on the passenger seat. His day-sack dug into my back as he passed Dex his revolver and speed loader. ‘It’s loaded.’

I concentrated on not fucking up the wiring that dangled beneath the steering column. Dex had rigged it up to get this thing started.

We stopped at a set of lights, which glowed red on Dex’s face. He wiggled his surgical-gloved fingers. ‘Man, rubber gloves and Tata in perfect harmony.’

27

It stank like a derelict house down there in the footwell. The rubber mats had worn through to bare metal, and there was a thick coating of sand.

Dex gave us a running commentary from the driver’s seat. If the shit hit the fan we needed to know exactly what was happening and where. ‘That’s us about to go into the tunnel.’ Everything went dark. Strip-lights flickered. ‘Coming out.’

All I could see was skyscrapers that blocked out the stars.

‘Approaching traffic-lights… looks like they’re going to be red…’ He sounded like a bad ventriloquist. He didn’t want other drivers to see him talking to himself.

‘That’s all the traffic in front slowing… slowing… lights are red. There’s a very nice Maserati down there, with a very beautiful woman… short skirt, lads… I can’t believe it, she’s not even looking up at me…’

‘Show her a picture of your castle, son.’

‘Lights changing, lights to green…’

The Tata shuddered before we moved on.

‘Nearly there, chaps.’

My right leg was cramping up. I had to get it straight. ‘Red – got to move, mate.’

He wasn’t impressed. ‘For fuck’s sake.’ I was treated to a cloud of cigarette breath.

My face ended up just a couple of centimetres from Dex’s flip-flops as he worked the pedals. They’d come from a skip as well.

He rumbled along, not speeding, but bumping around to keep his place in the freeway chaos.

I got cramp again. If a job kicks off well, the rest of it seems to flow. If it judders out of the blocks, it often turns into a nightmare.

‘Two hundred to go before our first stop.’

Air rushed through the open window and I caught a glimpse of streetlights. There was a bump and then darkness, like someone had thrown a switch.

‘Let’s see who’s with us, shall we?’ Dex checked the vehicles that had no choice now but to pass us. ‘So far, so good, chaps. No Toyota or Mazda, no one turning off, staking out, or even giving us a second look.’

The Tata shook itself like a wet dog and moved forward once more.

‘“Swing, swing to-ge-ther… With your bo-dies be-tween your knees…”’

For the next ten minutes we had to put up with his favourite chorus in between snatches of commentary.

‘Here we go, up the kerb.’

We’d reached our final stop and check. We bumped up onto the rough ground surrounding the target. The sky went dark and we came to a halt. The engine ticked over as Dex let the traffic zoom past.

‘No vehicles that came past last time.’ He gave it another thirty seconds. ‘That’s it, we’re clear. No one following and I have no movement or light on target.’ He killed the headlights.

28

Red Ken gave me room to stretch. ‘OK, that’s it. Let’s switch on.’

Dex rolled the wagon slowly over the wasteground towards the target. A couple of hundred metres away from it, he started easing up the handbrake instead of using the foot pedal. We didn’t want red taillights flashing on derelict ground.

We came to a halt and Red Ken and I jumped out. The lights of the city glowed all round our island of darkness. The ski-slope tower blinked about a K away so the Dexes of this world didn’t fly into it. About five hundred metres behind us, hundreds of vehicles flowed along the well-lit main.

We moved forward on foot.

The target wall was maybe a hundred and fifty ahead.

The gates facing the entrance to the building were immediately in front of us. From here on in, that side of the rectangle was White. The left-hand side was Green, the right was Red and the rear section Black. Colour coding prevented confusion: your rear could be someone else’s front.

We eased off to the left. Sweat trickled down my neck as we rounded the first corner of White and Green. We did a complete 360 of the compound wall, gradually spiralling in until we came right up against it where Red met White.

There was a constant hum of traffic. Helicopters buzzed from one high-rise to another in the background. We listened for movement inside the compound. We stayed like that for a couple of minutes, just listening and tuning in. The ambient light wasn’t strong enough to cast a shadow onto the wall, but now my night vision was kicking in I could see the dust and rubble below our feet. My fingers had pruned inside the surgical gloves, floating in pools of sweat.

Red Ken gave me a tap on the shoulder to check if I’d heard anything.

I shook my head.

We followed the wall on White until we reached the entrance.

29

The gate had once had a coat of paint, but I couldn’t tell what colour it had been. The desert wind had sandblasted some patches bare. Wind from the sea had made it rust and peel.

The three big padlocks Red Ken had spotted on their last recce were still in place: massive square things, just the body exposed so you couldn’t attack the shanks with a cutter.

Red Ken went down on his knees, scanning the ground for tread marks. The wind would have obliterated anything more than a few days old, so anything visible could be taken as recent. It was one more combat indicator, something that showed the enemy was close – because tonight there were no friendly forces.

A foot-high ridge of sand had built up along the bottom of the gate. If somebody had made entry recently it would have been disturbed. We were going to leave it just as it was.

Red Ken leant his back against the wall, knees bent. He cupped his hands on his lap. I put my right foot into his gloves, steadied myself with my hands on his shoulders, then reached up and grabbed the top of the wall. He stood and guided my feet to his shoulders.

The yard was pitch black. No vehicle lights, no lights from the windows either side of the shutters.

I waited twenty seconds before looking again, so my unconscious had time for everything around it to sink in. I came back down. ‘OK. We’re on.’

Red Ken moved a little further along the wall towards White and Red to be the marker for the Tata and I moved towards Dex to guide him in. He’d be driving without lights and using only the handbrake and gears.

I pulled my torch up onto my forehead. Its three LEDs shone white or red, as a stable beam or flashes for emergencies. Stable and red would do us fine, but not just yet. I walked until the Tata was almost on top of me and the cab blocked out the city lights behind it. I gripped the sill of the open window to murmur in Dex’s ear, ‘You can see the wall?’

‘Yep.’

‘OK, go half right then turn in. Red’s your marker.’

Dex kept it at gentle revs as he rolled forward. There was no rush about this bit. The noise wasn’t important; not hitting the brakes was. He pulled up the handbrake when he got to his mark and left the engine running.

I scrambled on top of the cab and jumped onto the wall. I dropped into a stretch of finely powdered sand that had had no way of escaping the compound. One hand on my pistol to keep it in my waistband, I ran to Black. All clear.

By the time I got back, Red Ken was checking the shutter. The glow from his head-torch bathed its sides and then its base. He scooped away years of encrusted sand. ‘I got fuck-all to get hold of, son. It’s got to be electric.’

Whoever had closed this down had done so from the inside and then come out via the door in the shutters. Three Chubbs secured that. We’d be here all night trying to defeat them. ‘We’ll have to pull out the frame.’

Silhouetted against the city lights, Dex stood astride the cab roof with the crane’s control box in his hand. The electric winch whined and the steel cable snaked down our side of the wall. Red Ken grabbed it and started walking towards the right-hand window.

30

I helped Red Ken loop the heavy steel hook round the eight bars and back onto the cable. He turned to Dex. ‘All right, mate, let’s do it. Nice and slow.’

The winch hauled in the cable until it was taut. Red Ken and I slipped round the corner of White and Red to get out of the way. If the cable snapped under tension, the whiplash would tear up anyone in its path, like shrapnel from a mortar round. Dex lay flat on the cab for the same reason. We heard the strain in the steel strands, and then a loud crack and rumble as the whole section of wall came away. It hit the ground with a thump and sent up a cloud of dust.

There wasn’t time to celebrate.

Red Ken undid the hook. I turned on my head-torch to constant red and climbed through the hole. I couldn’t see a thing. The red light bounced straight back off the dustcloud, like headlights in fog. The air was hot and musty. It felt like we were breaking into a pyramid. Coughing and spluttering, I began to make out plasterboard walls. I was in an office. I groped for the door. My nose and mouth had filled with grit. I gobbed it onto my shirt. I needed to contain my DNA.

I carried on through the door. My coughs suddenly echoed. I was in the warehouse proper. I turned towards where I thought the shutters should be and my torch beam hit their metal slats. The operating mechanism was mounted on the side wall. I tried pressing the ‘open’ button just in case. Then I grabbed the chain as high as I could and pulled. It didn’t budge. Years of disuse had seized it up.

I jumped up, with arms extended, and hung on, then kicked out from the wall like a kid in an adventure playground to apply some weight and traction from another angle. It gave an inch. I went through the same routine again, jumping up and kicking out, until it gradually relented. I sank to my knees as the slats began to concertina. My sweat-soaked face was coated with sand.

One final wrench and the shutter ascended. I could see Red Ken’s boots in the glow of his head-torch. The hook and webbing straps lay beside them. As soon as the gap was big enough, he rolled under and helped me pull. The shutter came to a complete stop as the inset door hit the top of the roll.

Dex was still on the wagon, silhouetted against the starlit sky.

The dust had almost settled. Our torch beams criss-crossed the interior of the building like lasers. The crates lay in the middle of the warehouse. Six feet by four and two feet high, they each stood on an individual pallet. We moved forward. I felt my heart beating faster. I didn’t want these two silly fuckers to be here – and I didn’t want to be here either.

Red Ken dropped his day-sack on the nearest crate and pulled out a mini-crowbar. We needed to be sure this wasn’t just a bulk shipment from the nearest burqa factory.

I went out to keep Dex in the loop. ‘Found the boxes, just checking – wait out.’ I ran back inside.

‘You need to have a look at this.’ Red Ken was surrounded by tiny white polystyrene balls. They still streamed from the panel he’d wrenched back from the corner of the nearest crate.

I leant down and did as I was told. A few little white balls still clung to the glimmering sheet of engraved yellow metal inside, but not enough to obscure the familiar moustache and smiling face of Saddam Hussein.

He banged the slat back into place. ‘This is the one we’re going to have. Fuck checking the rest.’

We fed the strapping under the pallet, secured it and worked the hook into the side of the webbing strap.

I ran back out. ‘OK, mate. Gently.’

There was nothing gentle about his reaction. ‘Pay day, pay day!’

The electric motor whined as the winch took the strain. The pallet groaned and jerked, then started to creep across the concrete floor towards the exit. Soon it was gouging its way over the open ground. We kept either side of it to make sure it didn’t tip over. We were just metres from the wall. At this rate we’d be fully loaded and out of here within thirty minutes.

Dex slackened off the cable. We grabbed the hook and moved it to the top of the webbing.

‘OK, mate, take it up.’

All he had to do was lift it over the wall, swing left, and lower.

Nothing happened.

I looked up. Dex was on his knees, leaning down towards us.

‘Not good, chaps. We have headlights moving towards Black.’

Red Ken had already grabbed the cable and hoisted himself up to join him.

31

I followed Red Ken up onto the cab roof and watched the single set of headlights, maybe two hundred away, career over the wasteground towards us.

Red Ken drew down his weapon and Dex copied.

I gripped Red Ken’s arm. ‘We’ve got no blue lights. It’s just one vehicle. Could be taking a shortcut.’

‘Maybe,’ Dex said. ‘But it’s going to pass really close. Bound to see us.’

‘Skyline!’

I had already jumped but Red Ken needed to drag Dex down.

We stayed in the shadow at the corner of White. I could now hear the rumble of tyres over rough ground. The approaching vehicle was hugging the wall on Red, its headlights throwing us into deeper shadow. The vehicle stopped just short of the corner.

Dex looked ready to lunge. I held him back. ‘We can contain this. Nobody’s got out yet. There’s no doors slamming, no shouting.’

The headlights died.

Red Ken was calm. ‘Dex, go play local. We’ll hold back. Keep whoever it is in the vehicle while we check them out.’

Dex didn’t hang around. Red Ken and I kept a few metres back. I moved away from the wall so we could deploy all three weapons without cutting into each other’s arcs.

An interior light came on at the rear. The vehicle was big, a 4x4. A dark-coloured Yukon, as big as Red Ken’s Suburban. I moved forward, weapon up, both eyes open. Dex orbited round to the rear cab. The wagon’s suspension shifted as a body changed position inside. Dex grabbed the door handle and pulled hard.

‘Don’t hurt me!’ The voice was terrified and female.

I closed on Dex as he covered her with a brown, swirly-patterned nylon fur blanket so she couldn’t see his face or know he wasn’t alone. The rear cab was littered with carrier bags full of clothes and towels, toiletries, packets of food and bottles of water. Whoever this was, the Yukon was her home.

Red Ken worked quietly up front in the glove compartment and under the seats. He found her handbag and pulled out a purse. Our three head-torches bathed the plastic card he produced in a rubber-gloved hand. The Canadian driver’s licence told us she was Sherry Capland.

32

She had about five hundred dollars’ worth of dirhams in her bag. There were no pictures of kids, just a wedding photo, her in a white veil and him in a tuxedo. She’d had long brown hair back then, permed up. A sob shook the blanket. ‘Please, please, don’t hurt me. Just take what you want.’

Red Ken tapped Dex on the shoulder and gave him the waffle sign with thumb and fingers.

He understood. ‘Shut up!’

Red whispered into Dex’s ear.

‘Where’s your husband?’

‘He’s in prison. He lost his job and-’

Red Ken sliced his index finger across his own throat.

Dex slapped the blanket. ‘Enough!’ He slammed the door on her and we got into a huddle.

‘She’s homeless.’ Red Ken spoke quietly. ‘It’s like I told you, if you get binned from your job and you’ve got debts you can’t cover, you’re fucked. You can’t leave the country. They fling you in prison. That’s why there’s all those wagons at the airport and the planes are full. If her old man’s locked up, that makes her an illegal.’

Dex nodded. ‘But what do we do with her?’

Red Ken turned back to the Yukon and opened the door. ‘Sit up, love. We’re not going to hurt you. It’s OK, so for fuck’s sake shut it, will you? Wrong place, wrong time, that’s all.’

She sat cross-legged with the blanket around her shoulders. She was maybe mid-thirties, but looked older. It’s difficult not to when your cheeks are tear-stained, you’ve got snot running from your nose and your hair’s plastered all over your face.

Dex pulled us back again, out of earshot. ‘We’ve got a problem. She’s seen us now. Why did you do that, Red? How do we keep the job secure?’

‘Tell you what.’ I put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ll drive her wagon. We’ll just keep her with us until we fly out.’

Red Ken nodded. ‘Let’s get on with it, then.’

I held out my hand for the keys. ‘I’ll bring the wagon round. You two can get on with the first load.’

I opened the back door. Sherry was curled up on the floor, wanting the world to go away. I couldn’t blame her. One eye peeped out from under her arm, like a child’s. Scared people have to be gripped. They don’t hear what you’re saying. They get more confused and more frightened, not less, and more danger to us and to themselves.

‘Sherry, listen in. Everything will be OK. You’re going to be with us until the morning. Just do what you’re told and you’ll be fine.’

Her bloodshot eyes fixed on mine. She nodded quickly, wanting to please me.

‘But if you try to run away, scream, shout, or do anything we don’t tell you to do, then all bets are off. You understand?’

She wiped snot from her nose and nodded some more.

‘Climb into the seat behind me. Cover yourself with the blanket.’

She scrambled over.

‘Now get in the footwell. Stay down there.’

I went round pulling up all the child locks, slamming and checking the handles wouldn’t open. I heard the electric motor kick in once more.

I got in behind the wheel and swung the wagon round so it paralleled the Tata’s cab. Dex could keep eyes-on while Red Ken and I worked in the building.

I locked the door behind me just as our crate cleared the wall. Dex manoeuvred it to the rear of the flatbed. Red Ken was already over the wall, heading back in to sort the next load.

Dex beamed at me. ‘Only five to go.’

I jumped down into the compound and helped Red Ken rig up the second pallet. ‘She secure?’

‘Yep, Dex has eyes-on.’ I put the hook into the side of the webbing and gave Dex the signal. ‘Red, I reckon we keep her all the way to the airport, yeah?’

‘Got to, so we know she isn’t gobbing off. But I don’t think she’ll be running to the police. She needs to stay underground and wait for that handsome young husband of hers.’

The second crate inched out of the warehouse and onto the sand.

33

2238 hrs

The city twinkled far behind in my rear-view. The Tata’s head-lights carved through the inky darkness in front of us.

Sherry kept her head down and didn’t breathe a word.

The Tata’s indicators kicked off and it turned to the right. Wooden benches and tables were dotted about the desert. It was some kind of picnic site. The Tata’s headlights raked the length of the white GMC Suburban and then stopped beside it. Dex got out and climbed onto the back of the truck to untie our crate. Red Ken opened the two doors at the back of his wagon.

I pulled in behind the truck, so Dex could keep an eye on Sherry, and got out to help.

It wasn’t long before our crate, still on its pallet, was being slowly hoisted into the back of the GMC. A set of headlights moved along the main and swept over us. They kept on going.

Dex manoeuvred it to just above the level of the rear sill. Red Ken positioned the roller, a short length of scaffolding pole, and we pushed the suspended crate until about a third of it penetrated the boot space. ‘OK, Dex, lower it.’

The suspension groaned as it took Saddam’s weight. Dex jumped down to help us push it all the way inside.

Red Ken brought out his cigarettes. ‘OK, order of march. Me, Dex, Nick. Nice and slow, keep within the limits.’ He turned to Dex. ‘Just short of the airport I’ll point out where I want you to park and wait out.’ He sparked up his lighter. ‘Nick, follow Dex and wait out when he parks. I’ll come to you. You then drop me off at the Tata and we move to the airstrip.’ He moved to the front of his Suburban without waiting for a reply.

34

The air-con in the Yukon was knackered so I had to keep the window open as we headed back towards the bright lights. The wind rattled through the vehicle as I felt around for a bottle of water among all the crap in the footwell. I didn’t find one.

Streetlights soon started to glare and traffic-lights held us at every other junction. I continued to follow the five crates on the Tata as we eventually got onto the main drag to the airport. Dex’s right indicator flashed once more. He turned off into wasteground between a strip mall and an apartment block that had become a makeshift car park. I closed up behind Red Ken and we were soon on the elevated approach road, channelled towards Departures for the Emirates terminal.

We carried on past the brilliantly lit glass-fronted building. The forecourt was almost deserted apart from a couple of taxis, a white Toyota and a blue Mazda, both one up, in the no-parking zone. I powered up the window and stared ahead. I wondered if Checked and White were inside the terminal. The airport was the last of our known locations. They’d be checking to see if we’d changed flights, or were waiting in the departure lounge. They’d be severely pissed off. Not just about losing their targets and not finding out what they were up to, but about looking like dickheads for losing them at all.

I waited outside the Emirates terminal long-term car park as the Suburban disappeared inside. There was still no noise from Sherry, just movement now and again under the blanket.

Five minutes later he emerged from the concrete multi-storey. He didn’t come and jump into the passenger seat but waved for me to get out of the wagon and join him by the stairwell. ‘She doesn’t need to know this. It’s on the first floor, row sixteen. The key is on top of the back box of the exhaust.’

He checked his watch.

‘Red, you see the team up at Departures?’

‘Fuck ’em. Whatever happens, we’ve got some of what we came here for. Tell you what, son. I can’t wait to get home. There’s the christening in a couple of weeks and a lot of straight talking to be done. I’m ready for it. I’m gonna tell her I’ve been a total arsehole, but that’s about to change. No more work. I no longer need to – and, what’s more, I don’t want to. It’s all about her from now on.’

‘That’s good, mate.’ I started heading for the Yukon.

‘Nick, listen. I just want to say thanks for coming on the job. Tenny’s death really… affected us… Me and Dex, we were hoping you’d be with us – you know, together again. It wasn’t just the job, it-’

‘We’re mates,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t let you two down. I’m here because I want to look after you. Never forget that.’ I turned back towards the wagon. Any more of this shit and I’d have to start pretending I’d got some grit in my eye.

35

I dropped Red Ken off with Dex and was soon following the Tata again. Within thirty minutes we were out of the city and on the coastal highway. Before we got as far as Abu Dhabi, we were going to chuck a left and head south, as if for Saudi, less than a couple of hours away. The airstrip lay about thirty K down that road.

Above the hum of tyres on tarmac I could hear the odd sniffle from behind me. ‘Sherry, sit up. Keep the blanket on your head and sit up.’

She got up slowly. Her muscles would be in shit state after the hours she’d spent down there. In the rear-view she looked like she was wearing a furry brown burqa.

I shouted over my shoulder. ‘What did your old man get?’

‘Nine months.’

‘For having debts?’

It was a while before she spoke. ‘Bradley has a brain tumour. He’s going to die in there.’

The brake-lights on the Tata glowed. We came to a halt off the road.

‘Sherry.’

‘Yes?’

‘Get down and stay down. It’s nearly over.’

‘You’re going to kill me, aren’t you? That’s what happens.’

‘Just keep quiet. You’ve been watching too much TV.’

Dex killed his lights and I did the same. I climbed out to meet the other two between the wagons.

The wind was picking up. The sky was full of stars, but there was no ambient light on the ground – apart from round Red Ken, who’d lit his three hundredth B &H of the day.

We were about seven hundred short of the airstrip. We’d wait until we heard the aircraft coming in before we moved in to meet up with Spag. He should already be at his stand-off point.

I told them about Bradley.

Red Ken blew out a lungful of smoke. ‘What do you reckon?’

‘She’s not a problem to us. She has enough stuff of her own to worry about. I’ll clean her up with the wipes and take her into my room tonight. They’ll think she’s a hooker.’

Dex checked his watch. ‘Twenty minutes.’

We settled cross-legged between the two wagons and waited.

I scooped up handfuls of sand and let it run through my fingers. Dex stretched to ease the tension in his shoulder muscles. ‘Chaps, what about us chipping away just a few ounces to take back home? We’ll get it through Customs, no problem. I thought I’d get three rings made for us.’

Red Ken lit yet another B &H. ‘Soft in the head.’

‘I was thinking of inscribing mine with my new motto. “Saddam gratias tibi ago.”’

I had to ask. ‘Which means?’

‘“Thank you, Saddam.”’

36

The navigation lights were clearly visible in the black sky long before we heard the jets. A few hundred metres ahead of us, the landing-strip lights suddenly fired up and the desert turned into a stretch of the M25.

We climbed on top of the Tata. No other light sources were visible in any direction.

Red Ken flicked his B &H into the sand to join the others. ‘Nick, make sure you grip that girl. Keep a bound away and back us.’

‘That’s what I’m here for, mate.’

Dex held out a hand to each of us. ‘Good luck, chaps.’

We jumped down and got to work. Dex and Red Ken were going to drive down to the aircraft in the Tata. I’d follow.

The plane screamed in. The moment it had taxied to a halt, the landing-strip lights were doused. We bounced onto the tarmac. Spag was supposed to be waiting on the link road between the single track and the perimeter fence.

I kept the window up.

‘Sherry?’

I got a muffled ‘Yes.’

‘Stay low. Don’t move, no matter what. Help us by keeping out of the way and you could be free in a couple of hours.’

The brake-lights ahead glowed red. I kept a distance of thirty metres, headlights on full beam. The Taurus was under my right thigh. My lights picked out what looked like a white version of Postman Pat’s van at the junction with the metalled track. Spag was in the driver’s seat.

Red Ken jumped down from the Tata and Spag wriggled out of the Nissan Cube. They waffled for a while. Red Ken waved me up to them and Dex also got out. By the time I’d joined them, Spag was going ballistic about the missing crate.

Red Ken was calm. ‘You’re lucky we got that many out before we got compromised. You could have lost the lot.’

Spag spun on his heel. ‘Jee-sus Christ!’

Red Ken put up an arm. ‘You’re Mr Fucking Sirloin. You sort it, or go and get it yourself.’

Spag turned back, pointing up at Red Ken’s chin. ‘If I find you’ve screwed the deal over-’

‘You’ll what? Listen, crap-hat – if we’d wanted to play silly buggers we’d have taken the lot and wouldn’t be here. So let’s crack on and get the job done.’

It was Red Ken’s turn to do the pointing. ‘OK, this is what’s going to happen. You’re going to stay with me all the way through. If we get stitched up, you’ll be the first to get the good news. Dex?’

Dex drew down his weapon.

Spag’s finger shook like a battery-operated vibrator. ‘We agreed – no weapons!’

Red Ken wanted to move on. ‘How many on the aircraft?’

‘Two pilots and two or three guys to load up. That’s it.’

‘OK. I go with you in your car. We load, and then we come back here and we all go our different ways. Until then, you’re mine.’ He was already heading for the right-hand seat of the Cube. Dex climbed back into the Tata. Seconds later, all three vehicles were paralleling the black strip of tarmac, lights killed.

The aircraft was ahead. A dim glow came from the open cargo door at the rear. It got brighter as we got closer. Soon I could make out four bodies and a long conveyor-belt sloping from the tarmac to the plane’s interior.

I held back as the Tata and the Cube pulled up alongside it. The flatbed became a blur of activity.

I got out of the Yukon to the whine of idling jets. These boys were going to turn around as quickly as they could and fuck off again. The markings on the fuselage told me it was a French-made Dassault Falcon business jet. It had three engines at the back. Its registration mark was on the centre engine covering that made up part of the tail. It looked big enough to cross from Europe to the USA without a refuel, so its destination could have been pretty much anywhere. I’d never seen the RF designation before. I hadn’t a clue what country it belonged to.

All four crew were in the pool of light spilling from the cargo door. They were all white. The pilots wore crisp white shirts and black ties. The two loadies were in jeans and short-sleeved shirts. Both had short back and sides. The smaller had sideburns that ended below his ears. The larger had a tattoo on the back of his neck, a phoenix surrounded by flames that seemed to rear from his collar. His arms were almost solid black with designs.

The pilots walked back through the cabin and into the cockpit.

There was a whine as the crane began doing its stuff. Dex stood on the ground with the control box. He manoeuvred the hook towards the two in jeans, who were attaching straps in readiness.

I could make out Red Ken’s head the other side of the cab. Spag’s bobbed into view now and again.

I kept my eyes beyond the activity, checking the periphery for movement, light or sound.

37

The final crate was about to hit the rollers. I watched from just beyond the light. Dex stood on the Tata’s flatbed with the control box. Spag and Red Ken were the other side of the cab, just out of sight.

A movement caught my eye from inside the aircraft. A body crossed the front cabin window. My eyes flicked to the cockpit. I could only see part of it, but the pilots were both mincing about with the controls.

Spag had said two or three, plus crew. The body crossed the next window, heading to the rear of the aircraft. It wasn’t running.

The last crate disappeared into the hold and the two loadies jumped down to dismantle the conveyor. Dex brought the crane back into the idle.

The face that appeared at the cabin door was Middle Eastern – with a nose like a Roman emperor. The body was tall and angular. He surveyed the scene. He wasn’t in uniform or jeans. He wore a tan windcheater and trousers. His eyes scanned the pool of light, like an ageing rock star looking out at his audience. His eyes were hooded, but unforgettable.

As quickly as he’d appeared, he jerked back inside the cabin and the two loadies drew down.

‘Gun!’

The first rounds kicked off.

My pistol was out but Dex was already falling. He hit the edge of the flatbed and cartwheeled onto the runway, drilled by Tattoo’s semi-automatic.

I broke into a run.

38

At this range, it was going to be difficult to take them down. I closed in. I could now see the second loadie. His muzzle flashes bounced around in the darkness. He was firing into the other two down on the tarmac.

Dex lay very still in a pool of his blood. His face was in lumps.

The other two were covered with blood. It looked like Spag had tried to make a run for it. He was lying a short distance from Red Ken.

Tattoo must have detected movement.

He dropped to his knee in Dex’s blood and his head swivelled like a reptile’s. His eyes homed in on me. As he pushed the mag-release catch with his thumb, his left hand went behind him. The mag fell onto what was left of Dex’s head. Tattoo’s left hand returned, clutching a new mag.

I didn’t have time to go stable to take my shot. But even ten metres was too far for a revolver on the move. He didn’t flinch as I fired. The top slide was back on his weapon, ready to receive the new mag. He was calm and controlled.

I made more ground, weapon up.

I fired the Taurus twice more. Tattoo had a whole magazine – twelve, thirteen, maybe twenty rounds if it had an extension. I had just three left, and then the speed loader. I hoped he might turn away or fumble the mag change to give me time for a decent close-range shot, but this boy was too good. In almost the same movement he pushed in the fresh mag and released the top slide with his thumb. It flew forward and picked up a round as he brought it up.

The guy behind him went down on his knee and reloaded.

Tattoo had both eyes open as I ran into his sight picture.

I jinked left.

He fired.

I jinked again, and this time I turned. I ran hard, focused on the Yukon, blanking out the gunshots behind me. No evasive action, none of that shit now. I just kept going. The three of them were dead. There was nothing I could do for them.

The firing behind me was more distant. Only a lucky shot would take me down. All he could do was pump out the rounds and hope.

Just metres to the car.

The tiniest movement of the barrel translates into an enormous diversion of the round.

Head down, almost at the door.

No shouts behind me, no confusion, just more shots.

I grabbed the door handle, jumped into the seat and saw both of them running forward, dumping magazines and throwing in new ones.

I took a breath to slow everything down.

Key in, ignition on.

The windscreen took a round top right. It crazed like a spider’s web but the toughened glass held. I pushed my foot to the floor and the auto-transmission did its stuff. I steered for the gate on full beam, hit the main road and swung the vehicle left.

There was no follow-up in the rear-view – at least, none using headlights.

Why would they bother? They’d got everything they wanted, apart from one crate.

I fought to contain the emotion that boiled inside me. Anger wasn’t going to help get me out of here. First I had to pick up my passport and then get out of Dubai – maybe head east for Oman a couple of hours’ north. Once I was safe, I’d call Julian. He’d get me out of the shit.

I was back on the coast road. The city soon glowed on the horizon. A few K more and, as I passed the rest area where we’d loaded the Suburban, I could see the warning lights blink on top of the skyscrapers.

Six K later I was pulling into wasteland just inside the city limits. I jumped out, looking for something hard to do some damage. ‘Sherry, it’s OK – get up.’

The ground was littered with piles of broken-up concrete blocks and reinforcement rods from the construction sites all around us. A lump of concrete would work for me.

By the time I got back to the wagon she was sitting up with the blanket still over her head. ‘You don’t need that any more.’ I opened the rear door. One look at what I had in my hand confirmed her worst fears. ‘God, please, no!’

I headed for the windscreen. ‘Shut up and get out!’

I started by giving the bullet hole a couple of hits to disguise it. Sherry stood there, the blanket still in her hand. ‘You’re safe, Sherry. It’s all over. I’m fucking off now and so should you. If you want to see your husband, don’t say a word to anyone. If you do, you’re in the shit with the UAE.’

I didn’t give her time to answer. She just needed gripping. ‘Go get the windscreen replaced.’ I gave her half the money I had on me. She took the cash and didn’t say a word or even draw breath before jumping into the driver’s seat and hitting the gas. Fair one.

I watched her rear lights melt into the mass of streetlights and neon before I started walking in the same direction.

39

First light

I asked the driver to drop me off along the Creek, just past the tunnel. I walked along the waterfront towards the toilet block a K away. There were a lot of people about, despite the time of day. Indians and Filipinos, of course. The traffic was constant but not dense.

I stopped short of the toilet block, taking a seat inside one of the space-age bus shelters. I looked and watched, clearing the area around one of our known locations. It would have appeared a long shot to the lads who’d been following us, but one they would have considered.

I’d take the others’ passports and cash as well. They had no use for them now.

A couple of old Indian women came and sat down beside me. They ignored the white man in shit state who was waiting for a bus.

I couldn’t see a Toyota or Mazda, no one sitting in any vehicle, just the odd guy going in and coming pretty much straight out again. Everything looked normal.

I nodded goodbye to the women and headed down the subway. I turned left as I emerged and went straight into the toilet block. It was empty.

I felt along the shelf. There was nothing.

Shit.

I started running to the door. I was heading out into the market area, anywhere I could make distance and lose myself down alleyways, behind buildings, anywhere to escape.

A body crashed into me in the doorway. I stumbled backwards. There were another two, maybe three, behind him. They flooded me, and as my head hit the wall I caught a flash of blue shirt. The next thing I heard was the crackle of a Tazer. A nanosecond later, my body exploded and I dropped.