Crossfire

18

The e-mail to Sigurd Bellido was ready to go by half past eleven. Sigurd.There has been a mix-up at our end, and I need to transfer back to the UK the last two payments that were made into the Rock Bank Ltd account on Thursday and Friday of last week. Please transfer, as soon as possible, from the Rock Bank Ltd account (number 01201030866) at your bank:

(1) U. S. $2,000,000 (two million U. S. dollars) to Barclays Bank plc, SWIFT code BARCGB2LBGA, Belgravia branch, for further credit to Mr. Martin Toleron, sort code 20-62-18, account number 81634587

(2) U. S. $1,000,000 (one million U. S. dollars) to HSBC bank plc, SWIFT code HSBCGB6174A, Hungerford Branch, for further credit to Mrs. Josephine Kauri, sort code 40-28-73, account number 15638409

Please carry out these transfers as soon as possible, preferably immediately. I trust your mother-in-law continues to make a sound recovery. Many thanks. AR.

Martin Toleron and I had looked through all the transfer requests in Alex Reece's Gibraltar folder, and we had studied closely the language and layout he had used in the past.

"Are you happy with it?" Martin asked.

"As happy as I can be," I said.

"Do you think it will work?"

"Maybe," I said. "But we have nothing to lose by trying."

"I have," he said. "I stand to lose two million dollars."

I decided against saying that he'd told me he could afford it. "You've already lost it, but this might just get it back. It's worth a try, but it's a hell of a lot of money for a bank to transfer without making any other checks."

"They'll e-mail him back, though," Martin said.

"Oh, for sure."

By looking at all the e-mails to and from SB and AR we had discovered a pattern. Alex would e-mail the request always at about midday or five minutes either side, UK time. Sigurd would then e-mail straight back, acknowledging receipt and requesting confirmation. Alex would then instantly respond to that with a note that contained some comment, not now about Sigurd's mother-in-law but about the weather in the UK.

The Taliban would have had a field day with this pathetic level of security. I only hoped that Alex hadn't realized that I had copied his messages and compromised his defenses.

"Are you ready to intercept SB's reply?" Martin asked.

"As ready as I can be," I said. "I'm logged on to Alex Reece's e-mail account via the mail2web webmail service, but it will all go wrong if Alex downloads the reply straight to his computer from the server. We'll just have to take the chance that he doesn't click on send/receive at that precise moment."

"Do you have the reply ready?" He was hopping from foot to foot with his nervousness as he stood behind me at his desk.

"Calm down, Martin," I said. "Let's just hope that the real Alex Reece isn't sending his own transfer e-mail to SB today."

"Oh my God," said Martin. "That would really confuse things."

"The shortest time that money has spent in the account before being moved on is six days. It is now five days since the first one arrived and four since the second. So I don't expect a real transfer request from Alex today."

"How about if SB knows that it has to be a minimum of six days or it's a fake request?"

"We'll know that soon enough," I said. "It's two minutes to twelve."

I pushed the send button, and the message disappeared from the screen. It was on its way, and we were left holding our breaths.

We both waited in silence as I continually refreshed the webmail page. The clock on the computer moved past twelve o'clock to twelve oh-one. I refreshed the page once more. Nothing. I forced myself to be calm and wait for a count of ten before I clicked on the refresh button again. Still nothing. I counted again, slowly, this time to fifteen, but still nothing came.

The reply arrived at nine minutes past twelve, by which time I had all but given up hope. Alex. I acknowledge receipt of your instructions. To which party do I charge the transfer costs? SB.

I had the reply ready to send, but I quickly pulled it up to make the changes. I typed in the new information. Sigurd, I confirm receipt of your acknowledgment and I endorse the instructions. Please charge the transfer costs to the recipients.Thank goodness spring is nearly here in the UK and the temperature has begun to rise. AR.

I pushed the send button, and again the message disappeared from the screen. Next, I used the mail2web tools to delete SB's reply from the server so that it would not appear on Alex's computer when he downloaded his mail.

"Now we wait and see," I said. But I went on monitoring the webmail page for another forty minutes before I was happy that SB wasn't going to ask another question.

"Do you think it will work?" he said.

"Do you?" I asked in reply.

"Not really," he said. "It was much too easy."

"Yes," I said. "Almost as easy as getting you to part with the two million dollars in the first place!"

Martin called his bank and asked them to inform him by telephone immediately if a large deposit arrived. My mother, meanwhile, might simply have to wait to see if it appeared on her bank statement.

"Call me if you hear anything," I said, shaking his hand in the driveway.

"Don't worry, I will," he said with a smile. "Quite an entertaining morning, I'd say. Much more exciting than the boring existence I have now found for myself."

"You miss running your company, then?" I asked.

"Miss it!" he said. "I grieve for my loss."

"But you have all that money."

"Yes," he said rather forlornly. "But what can I do every day? Count it? I started in business when I was straight out of school, aged sixteen. It wasn't plastics in those days, it was cardboard. Cardboard boxes for home-moving companies. They were all still using old tea chests then, and I reckoned that cardboard would be better. I started by collecting old cardboard boxes from shops and passing them on to the moving men. Then I started importing boxes, both cardboard and plastic."

He sighed.

"Where did the drainpipes come from?" I asked.

"The man who made the plastic boxes in Germany also made drainpipe, and I bought the UK rights from him. And it just took off. That was years ago."

"Why did you sell?"

"I'm sixty-eight, and neither of my children are interested in running any business, let alone a drainpipe business. Far too boring for them. But I loved it. I used to get to the factory in Swindon at seven in the morning, and often I'd not leave before ten at night. It was such fun."

"Didn't your wife object?" I asked.

"Oh, I expect so," he said, laughing. "But she does so enjoy shopping in Harrods."

"So what will you do in the future? Will you start something else?"

"No," he said, with another sigh. "I don't think so. I suppose I'll have to go to Harrods more often with my wife. We need to do something with all that money."

The prospect of more shopping with his wife clearly didn't make him happy. I obviously wasn't the only person viewing his future life with anxiety and trepidation.

"Shop for some racehorses," I said. "I hear that's a great way to spend loads of money, and it can be lots of fun too."

"What a great idea," he said. "I'll do just that."

"And," I said, "I know a way to save you all the VAT."

We both laughed out loud.

As I had hoped, Martin Toleron and I parted as friends, not foes.

Martin called my cell phone at a quarter past three as I was dozing on Ian's sofa, half watching the racing from Huntingdon on the television.

"Have you heard from the bank?" I asked, instantly wide awake.

"No, nothing from them," he said. "But I've just had a call from Jackson Warren."

"Wow," I said, clapping my hands together. "And what did he say?"

"He tried to tell me that the bank in Gibraltar had made an error and had inexplicably returned my two million dollars to my account. He asked if I would mind instructing my bank to send it again."

"And what did you say?" I asked.

"I expressed surprise that Jackson was calling me, as I had no idea that he was involved with the organization of the fund. I told him that I thought he was just another satisfied investor."

"And what did he say then?"

"He tried to tell me that he had only been called by the fund manager because he, the manager, knew that Jackson was a friend of mine."

He paused. "Yes?" I said. "Go on."

"I lost my rag a bit. I told him to get stuffed. I said that I would not be investing in anything to do with him, as he had purposely misled me. I also told him I'd be reporting the incident to the Financial Services Authority."

"I bet he didn't take kindly to that."

"No, he didn't," Martin said. "In fact, he threatened me."

"He what?"

"He told me straight-out that if I went to the FSA I'd regret it. I asked him what exactly he meant by that, but all he said was 'Work it out.' "

That was the same phrase that Alex had said to me.

"And," Martin went on, "he doesn't seem to be too pleased with you either."

"How so?" I asked.

"He point-blank accused me of conspiring with you to defraud him. I told him that was rich coming from him, and he could go and boil his brains, or words to that effect."

I wasn't altogether sure that insulting Jackson Warren was a sensible policy. Insults sometimes provoked extreme reactions, and some historians now believed that Saddam Hussein's cruel invasion of Kuwait in 1990 was the direct result of a personal insult to the Iraqi people from the Emir.

"Did he ask if you knew where I was?" I asked.

"Ask me?" He laughed. "He demanded that I tell him. I simply said that I had no idea where you were, and also that I wouldn't have told him if I did."

"How secure are your gates?" I asked.

"Why?" He sounded slightly worried for the first time.

"I think that Jackson Warren is a very dangerous man," I said seriously. "Martin, this is not a game. He has already tried to kill me once, and I am sure he would do it again without hesitation. So keep your gates locked and watch your back."

"I will," he said, and hung up, no doubt, to go outside rapidly and make sure his gates were closed and bolted.

Was it now time, I wondered, to involve the police and be damned about the tax consequences? But what could I say to them? "Well, officer, Mr. Jackson Warren tried to kill me by hanging me up to starve to death in a disused stable when I had to stand on only one leg for days, but I escaped by unscrewing the hay-net ring, climbing over the stable walls and breaking a window in the tack room, but I've only now decided to tell you about it, a week later, after I've been sneaking around Berkshire in camouflage cream, attacking and torturing one of Mr. Warren's associates using fake insulin and a hypodermic needle, and using the information I illegally obtained from him to transfer one million American dollars from Mr. Warren's company in Gibraltar into my mother's personal bank account in Hungerford."

Somehow, I didn't think it would bring the Thames Valley Constabulary rushing to Jackson's front door to make an immediate arrest. They would be far more likely to send me to a psychiatrist, and then Jackson would know exactly where I was.

It was much safer, I thought, to lie low for a while and let things blow over.

How mistaken could I be? The answer was badly.

The first sign that things had gone dangerously wrong was a hammering on the door of Ian's flat that woke me from a deep sleep.

It was pitch-black, and I struggled to find my way to the light switch. The hammering continued unabated. I turned on the light and looked at the clock. It was one-thirty in the morning. Who could be knocking at this ungodly hour?

I grabbed my shirt and went over to the door. I was about to unlock it when I suddenly stepped back. Could it be Jackson Warren outside? Or Alex Reece? Or Peter Garraway?

"Who is it?" I shouted.

"Derek Philips," came the reply. My stepfather.

Ian appeared from his bedroom, bleary-eyed and wearing blue-striped boxer shorts.

"What the hell's going on?" he said, squinting against the brightness.

"It's my stepfather," I said to him.

"Well, open the door, then."

But I wasn't sure enough. "Are you alone?" I shouted.

"What bloody difference does that make?" Ian said, striding towards me. "Open the bloody door. Here." He pushed past and unlocked it himself.

Derek almost fell into the room as the door opened, and he was alone.

"Thank God," he said. Then he saw me. "What the bloody hell are you doing here?"

I ignored his question. "Derek, what's wrong?" I asked.

"It's your mother," he said, clearly distressed.

Oh no, I thought. She must have decided to kill herself after all.

"What about her?" I asked, dreading the answer.

"She's been kidnapped."

"What?" I said in disbelief.

"She's been kidnapped," he repeated.

It sounded so unlikely.

"Who by?" I asked.

"Two men," he said. "They came looking for you."

Derek and Ian both looked at me accusingly.

"Who were they?" Ian asked him.

"I don't know," Derek said. "They were wearing those ski masks, like balaclavas, but I don't think either of them was very young."

"Why not?"

"Something about the way they moved," Derek said.

I, meanwhile, believed I knew exactly who they were, and Derek was right, neither of them was young. Two desperate men in their sixties, trying to recover the money they thought they had successfully stolen, but which I had then stolen back. But where was Alex Reece?

"Are you sure there were just two of them?" I asked. "Not three?"

"I only saw two," Derek said. "Why? Do you know who they are?" He and Ian looked accusingly at me once more.

"What exactly did they say?" I asked, trying to ignore their stares.

"I don't really remember. It all happened so fast," he said. "They had somehow got into the house and were in our bedroom. One of them poked me with the barrels of a shotgun to wake me up." He was almost in tears, and I could understand how frightened he and my mother must have been. "They said they wanted you, but we told them we didn't know where you were. We said we thought you were in London."

So not telling my mother where I was had saved me a visit from the ski-masked duo. But at what cost to her?

"But why did they take her with them?" I asked, but I already knew the answer. They knew that I'd come to them if they had my mother. "Did they tell you where they were taking her?"

"No," Derek said. "But they did tell me that you would know where she would be."

"Have you called the police?" Ian asked.

"No police," Derek said urgently. "They told me that I mustn't call the police. Call the police and Josephine dies, that's what they said. They told me to think about it for a while and then to call you." He nodded at me. "But I didn't know where you were, and I don't even have your phone number." He was crying now. "All I could think of was asking Ian."

I would know where she would be. That's what the kidnappers had told Derek.

I would know where she would be.

And I did.

I approached Greystone Stables, not from the road and up the driveway as my enemy might have expected but from the opposite direction over the undulating farmland, and through the woods on the hill above.

In war, tactical surprise is essential, as it had been during the recapture of the Falkland Islands. The Argentine forces, far superior in number, had believed that it was impossible for the British to approach Stanley, the island capital, across the swampy, uncharted interior, and had dug in their defenses for an attack from the sea. How wrong they were. The Royal Marines and Parachute Regiment's "yomp" across the island, carrying eighty-pound Bergens over more than fifty-six miles in three days, has since become the stuff of folklore in the army. It had been one of the major factors in that victory.

In my case, I was just glad not to have an eighty-pound Bergen on my back.

I stopped a few feet short of the limit of the trees and knelt down on my left knee. I looked again at my watch with its luminous face. More than two hours had passed since Derek had arrived so distressed at the door of Ian's flat. It was now three forty-two a.m. The windless night was beautifully clear, with a wonderful canopy of twinkling stars. The moon's phase was just past first quarter, and it was sinking rapidly towards the western horizon to my left. In forty minutes or so, the moon would be down completely, and the blackness of the night would deepen for a couple of hours before the arrival of the sun, and the dawning of another day.

I liked the darkness. It was my friend.

In the last of the moonlight I studied the layout of the deserted house and stables spread out below me. I could see no lights, and no movement, but I was sure this was where the two men had meant when they'd told Derek I would know where my mother would be.

But would she actually be here, or had it been a ruse to bring me to this place on a wild-goose chase, to fall willingly into their waiting hands while my mother was actually incarcerated somewhere else?

It had taken all my limited powers of persuasion to convince Ian not to call the police immediately. Derek too had begged him not to.

"But we must call the police," Ian had said with certainty.

"We will," I'd replied. "But give me a chance to free my mother first."

Did I really think that Jackson Warren and Peter Garraway would harm her, or even kill her? I thought it unlikely, but I couldn't know for sure. Desperate people do desperate things, and I remembered only too well how they had left me to die horribly from starvation and dehydration.

I had left Derek and Ian in the latter's flat, Derek cuddling a bottle of brandy he had returned briefly to Kauri House to collect, and Ian with a list of detailed instructions, including one to telephone the police immediately if he hadn't heard from me by six-thirty in the morning.

They had both watched with rising interest and astonishment as I had made my mission preparations. First I'd changed into my dark clothes, together with the all-black Converse basketball boots, the right one requiring me to remove my false leg to force the canvas shoe over the plastic foot. Next, I had gathered the equipment into my little rucksack: black garden ties, scissors, duct tape, the red-colored first-aid kit, the length of chain with the padlock still attached, a torch and a box of matches, all of them wrapped up in a large navy blue towel to prevent any noise when I moved. This time I did borrow one of Ian's kitchen knives, a large, sharp carving knife, and I'd placed it on top of everything else in the rucksack, ready for easy access. I had then borrowed a pair of racing binoculars from my mother's office, and finally, I'd removed my sword from its protective cardboard tube and scabbard.

"Surely you're not going to use that," Derek had said, with his large brandy-filling eyes staring at the three-foot-long blade.

"Not unless I have to," I had replied casually, as I'd rubbed black boot polish onto the blade to reduce its shine. But I would use it, I thought, and without hesitation, if the need arose.

Killing the enemy had been my raison d'etre for the past fifteen years, and I'd been good at it. Values and Standards of the British Army demanded it. Paragraph ten states that "All soldiers must be prepared to use lethal force to fight: to take the lives of others, and knowingly to risk their own."

But was I still a soldier? Was this a war? And was I knowingly risking my own life or that of my mother?

I wasn't sure about the answers to any of those questions, but I knew one thing for certain. I felt alive again, whole and intact, and eager for the fray.

I scanned the buildings below me once more, using my mother's binoculars, searching for a light or a movement, any sign that would give away the enemy's position, but there was still nothing.

Was I wrong? Was this not the place they had meant?

I had skirted around the walls of Lambourn Hall on my way to this point, but it had been dark, locked and seemingly deserted.

They had to be here.

The moonlight was disappearing fast, and I would soon need to be on the move down across the open ground between my current location and the rear of the stables. I took one last look through the binoculars, and there it was, a movement, maybe only a stretching of a cramped leg or a warming rub of a freezing foot but a telltale movement nevertheless. Someone was waiting for me in the line of trees just to the right of the house as I looked. From that position he would have commanded a fine view of the driveway and the road below.

But if he was looking down there, he was looking the wrong way.

I was behind him.

But where was his accomplice?

The moon finally dipped out of sight, and the light rushed away with it. But I didn't move immediately, not for a minute or two, not until I was sure my eyes had fully adjusted to the change. In truth, the night had not become totally black, as there was still a slight glow from the stars, but it was no longer possible for me to see Greystone Stables from this position. Likewise, it would now be impossible for anyone down there to see me.

I checked once more that my cell phone was switched off, stood up and started forwards across the grass.