Hard Knocks

Four

After we’d showered and grabbed breakfast, they hustled us straight into the classroom. Gilby conducted the first lesson himself. He announced it, in the manner of someone expecting a round of applause, as an introduction to the art and science that was modern close protection work, and a debunking of the myths. Basically, it was an extended version of his welcome speech from the night before.

He was only mildly condescending towards the women in the industry, even admitting that they might have their areas of particular suitability. I smiled sweetly when he caught my eye, and tried not to show how much I was grinding my teeth. But, almost to my surprise, the more he spoke the more interested in the subject I became.

Annoyance and curiosity were useful emotions. They kept me awake. After the cold and the exertion of the morning, the stuffy heat of the classroom began to have its effect. Some of the students were visibly struggling not to fall asleep.

At one point McKenna nodded so hard that he nearly fell off his chair. He only got away with it by turning the movement into a violent coughing fit. He was a skinny youngster with a pale complexion that seemed to go pink at the slightest provocation. By the time he’d finished he was flushed from his prominent Adam’s apple right up into the roots of his hair.

Gilby paused and momentarily closed his eyes during McKenna’s performance. The show of mild irritation was natural enough, but that wasn’t what bothered me. It was the sudden utter immobility that came over him.

The way he did it made my skin tighten.

I’d come across men before who had that same innate stillness and it always put the fear of God into me. Gilby may have carried off a civilised gloss, but underneath was something dark, that coiled and slithered. And just for a moment his flash of temper had let it show. I’d thought him another out-of-touch officer, a borderline upper-class twit, but I’d been wrong.

I glanced sideways at the others, but the majority of them hadn’t noticed the change that had come over him. The ex-policewoman, Elsa was one of the few that had, I saw. Declan was just looking bored.

“The days of muscle-bound heavies in dark glasses are over,” Gilby continued, as though nothing had happened. “There will always be occasions when you’re called upon to provide a visible deterrent, but most of the time you’ll need to blend in with the rich, the famous, and the powerful.” He cast a critical eye over the disparate bunch of us as we wilted in our chairs. “I imagine for some of you that’s going to take quite some learning.”

He checked his watch, nodded sharply, then swept up his papers and walked out with his back ram-rod straight.

“I wonder how well your man there blends into a crowd,” Declan muttered as we gathered our notebooks. “You’d spot him for army brass even if he was wearing a dress.”

***

We went straight from there into a class for unarmed combat with Blakemore. The instructor must have been using an ice pack on his knee since the morning’s run, because when he sauntered into the room designated as the gym there was no sign of the limp.

After spending more than four years teaching self-defence classes for women, it was interesting to be on the receiving end. Blakemore was showy, I considered, but with the underlying grace that denotes an expert. The coarse construction of his face, the heavy layout of his features, could have fooled you into thinking he was little more than a thug. I hadn’t been expecting such finesse or delicacy of technique, but it would seem my first impression of him had been the right one.

Now, he demonstrated half a dozen moves for restraint and removal of someone who might be approaching your principal in a threatening manner.

I was surprised to see that he was using O’Neill as his guinea pig. The Irishman was clearly unhappy to be put into repeated arm- and head-locks, and then dropped onto the crashmats under foot. A couple of times I caught him passing a hand over his ribs as he got to his feet. The looks he levelled towards the impassive Blakemore should have been enough to make him shiver.

Blakemore, however, absorbed each barbed glance without reaction. When he was done he picked up a pair of big sparring pads and tossed one across to the other man hard enough to almost make him stagger. What the hell’s going on here?

“OK,” he said, turning to the rest of us, “that’s the kind of thing we’re going to be showing you over the period of the course. To begin with, though, I want to find out what kind of a punch you can pack. Form two lines and let’s see what you can do.”

I watched the big blond German I’d sat next to the night before line up in front of Blakemore. He had a bodybuilder’s stance, with his arms pushed out away from his sides slightly by the sheer over-development of his upper arms and lats.

I’d learned that the German’s name was Michael Hofmann and he was ex-army, from an elite regiment that was the German equivalent of the Paras. No great surprises there, then.

Now, he squared up to Blakemore, who was holding the pad up across his chest and stomach with his arms tensed through the straps on the back. He was leaning hard into it, feet braced wide apart. Everybody stopped and watched as the big man moved forwards to take his first swing.

Hofmann smiled very slightly, and hit Blakemore with an explosive uppercut that compressed the thick foam pad almost to its fullest extent. It was a testament to the instructor’s upper body strength that he didn’t so much as shift his feet under the onslaught. Even though he rocked back from the force of the blow and let out a grunt of effort.

Hofmann looked vaguely disappointed, a frown creasing his brow as if he couldn’t compute why the other man was still standing. When someone the size of Hofmann hits you, you generally fall over and stay down.

By comparison, Shirley – who was next – barely made a dent in the pad. Blakemore grinned at her.

I turned my attention to the row I was in. Ahead of me, McKenna flailed wildly at the pad O’Neill was holding, to greater noise than effect. When he’d exhausted himself it was Jan’s turn.

She stepped forwards and I noticed O’Neill’s attention was elsewhere, that he was more interested in what was happening to Blakemore. I don’t know if Jan saw this, but she hit the pad low and right, at a point that corresponded almost exactly to the area I’d seen O’Neill favouring when Blakemore had been playing with him. She was only slightly built, but somewhere along the line she’d learned how to punch, keeping her wrist locked straight, putting most of her body weight behind it.

O’Neill wasn’t prepared for the force of the hit. It rocked him. He had to take a step back to counteract it, to regain his balance. I saw the surprise and anger in his face.

As she walked to the back of the line Blakemore called across, “Hey – Jan, isn’t it?”

She paused, turned.

A smile spread across his face as his eyes flicked to his fellow instructor. “Nice punch,” he said.

Jan nodded briefly and as she turned away she was smiling, too. She knew, I realised, that O’Neill was injured and yet she’d deliberately set out to hurt him. What does that say about you? I wondered. What makes you tick that way?

I was still mulling that one over when it was my shot. O’Neill eyed me warily, but I made sure I produced a suitably lacklustre blow.

He treated Jan’s second turn with caution, too. This time she throttled back so that he nearly over-compensated for her unexpectedly feeble fist. That didn’t serve to endear her any more than the harder blow he’d clearly been expecting.

It was only as we finished up the class, when O’Neill handed his pad back to Blakemore, that he touched a hand to his side. He pulled a face as he moved his fingers gently, like he was testing a tender area of skin.

“You all right?” Blakemore asked him, although there was no concern in his voice.

O’Neill let his hand drop away. “I’m fine,” he said shortly. “Just fine. Leave it.”

With a brooding stare, Blakemore watched him walk out of the gym and vanish in the direction of the instructors’ quarters.

As the rest of us milled out into the main hallway Major Gilby put in an appearance. He informed us, to varying shades of dismay, that we’d each have to present a short talk to the rest of the class that afternoon.

“And what would that be about?” Declan asked.

“I would suggest that it has some relevance to the course you’re on,” Gilby clipped, with a fraction of a smile. “Some modern or historical event that illustrates close protection in one form or another. I want to see your take on the job. There have been plenty of assassinations or attempted assassinations to choose from. Look at all the political hits that have taken place over the past fifty years – Sadat, the Kennedys, Earl Mountbatten.”

He dropped the last name in with a flickered glance at Declan, as though the Irishman had been personally responsible for the terrorist bomb attack that had killed the Queen’s distant cousin. Did he needle O’Neill like that, too? “I’m sure I can rely on you all to come up with something different.”

Declan was too laid back to rise to the Major’s little dig. “And just where are we supposed to find out all the gory details at this kind of notice?” he said instead.

Gilby smiled at him, more fully this time. “There’s plenty of information in the library,” he said. “You’ll have an hour after lunch to do your research.”

Then, with his usual curt nod, he turned and disappeared again.

***

We had ten minutes to kill before lunch. Some of the students headed straight for the library, but I needed some fresh air. I grabbed my jacket and slipped out through the main doorway, trying not to shiver at the cloak of cold that instantly wrapped itself around me.

It was just before noon and in theory the sun was at its height. In reality it was practising low-level flying techniques, barely skimming over the tops of the trees to the south of me.

I stuck my hands deep into the pockets of my jacket and hunched down into the collar, trying to make a windproof seal. It didn’t work particularly well.

There was a selection of cars on the forecourt, most of which apparently belonged to the instructors. There was one motorbike among them, a black Honda CBR900RR, a FireBlade, and I felt myself irresistibly drawn over to have a closer look.

The bike was a nearly new model, with less than four thousand kilometres on the clock. I didn’t know who owned it, but whoever it was they certainly rode it with more guts than I would have done.

The back tyre was worn right to the edges on both sides and the hero pegs on the ends of the footrests were roughed up. You don’t get them like that unless you’ve been scratching them on the road surface round every available corner.

With a regretful thought to my RGV sitting abandoned in my father’s garage, I straightened up and strolled across the gravel towards the corner of the house. I had no particular aim or destination in mind, and I took the opportunity to get a feel for my surroundings in daylight for the first time.

Now I could see it properly Einsbaden Manor was a magnificent old place, imposing and severe, in grey stone that hadn’t weathered enough to lose the detail of the original carvings. Two large flat-roofed wings extended outwards from a semicircular central tower, with three rows of evenly spaced windows laid out with almost military precision.

I realised as I looked round that I had no more idea now about who had shot Kirk dead and why, than I did when Sean had first told me about it. Where on earth was I going to start looking? I had to admit that I didn’t have a clue.

Round the corner the gravel scattered onto a concrete path that followed the contours of the house. The air smelt clean, faintly of wood and pine needles.

Another ribbon of concrete stretched away across the grass towards a group of buildings about two hundred metres away, on the edge of the trees. As I watched, a man emerged from a doorway in one of the buildings, carefully locking it behind him. I was too far away to recognise who it was.

As casually as I could, I carried on further round the house. Towards the rear it lost its architectural neatness, became more random. The ground behind it dropped away sharply into what I should imagine were once formal gardens, but they’d been covered over with an all-weather surface. This was scored with tyre tracks. A group of slightly battered-looking, dirty vehicles were parked, haphazard, to one side. Ah, the dreaded defensive driving arena. I still wasn’t sure how I was going to cope with that one.

Reaching out from the ground floor at the back of the house was a walled terrace, raised a couple of metres off the ground so that it overlooked this glorified car park. Several of the students were already occupying this eyrie, despite the cold. As I drew nearer, I realised why.

All of them were furtively smoking. Gilby had made it clear from the outset that the whole of the Manor was strictly a smoke-free zone. It was a sign of their dedication to their habit, I thought, that they were prepared to brave such cold to enjoy it.

The bitter wind whipped over the exposed terrace, dragging the smoke with it. The last vestiges blew over me, tainted my nostrils. I decided not to advance any further.

All the ground floor windows had deep external window ledges, and I settled myself onto one. At least it was partly shielded from the weather.

As I watched, Jan came out onto the terrace. She had the collar of her coat pulled up with one hand as a windbreak, trying unsuccessfully with the other to light the cigarette in her mouth. After she’d made a few failed attempts I saw Hofmann lever himself away from the balustrade and offer her his lighter.

There was what seemed to be a long pause while they just looked at each other, before Jan reached out and took it. From the little I’d got to know of her, I’d worked out that Jan was the kind of girl who didn’t like accepting help from anyone, but least of all from a man.

Whatever make of lighter Hofmann owned, though, it was designed for outdoor use. It sparked and flared first time. She gave it back to him quickly, with a reluctant nod of thanks, before hurrying away.

Elsa was the next person out onto the terrace. She arrived with the only Norwegian student on the course, a surprisingly small guy called Tor Romundstad. I’d always thought the Norwegians were all strapping individuals, descended from Vikings, but he was a good six inches shorter than Elsa. He’d attempted to compensate for his lack of stature by cultivating the most enormous bushy moustache, like a seventies porn star. Elsa must have come out for the conversation rather than the nicotine, because although Romundstad was smoking, she was not.

Elsa’s attention wasn’t completely on her companion, though. I noticed her head kept turning towards Hofmann, who was still standing by the edge of the terrace, staring out over the grounds. After a minute or two longer she excused herself and went over to him.

I was too far away to hear their voices. The wind brought occasional snatches, but too faint and few to piece any words together. I had to work on body language instead.

From that I got the impression that Elsa asked Hofmann a question. One that he either didn’t know the answer to, or didn’t want to give it. Whichever, he met her enquiry with a dismissive shake of his head. She persisted, and it was then that Hofmann’s manner changed. He bent his head, leaning in to her and speaking fast.

I saw Elsa’s body jerk with the shock of his reaction, her face blanking. No one else on the terrace seemed to have noticed what was happening. I started levering myself forwards, but as quickly as it had started, it was over.

Hofmann threw down his cigarette end, stamped it out, and headed back inside, leaving Elsa standing forlornly behind him on the mossy flags.

I hopped down from my window ledge and walked the rest of the distance onto the terrace, crossing to the German woman. She didn’t seem to notice my arrival until I was almost on top of her. I touched her arm.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

She nodded vaguely, then glanced at me and seemed to pull herself together. “Yes, Charlie, thank you. I am OK.”

“I saw you talking to Michael Hofmann, and he didn’t look happy about it,” I said. “What happened?”

“I thought I knew him,” Elsa murmured. Her glasses had darkened in the light so it was difficult to read her eyes, but her voice was off-kilter, almost a babble, and her face was too pale. “You know how it is, you think you recognise someone and then you feel foolish when you are mistaken.”

She looked up at me again, as if to see how I was swallowing the lie. Not well, she realised. “Please excuse me,” she said. “It is time for lunch and we must prepare our little talk for afterwards, no?”

Before I could stop her, she’d hurried inside, letting the partly glazed door slam behind her. Romundstad also watched her go and he turned and raised an eyebrow at me, as though I was the one who’d upset her.

“Well now,” I muttered to myself, “what the hell was that all about?”

***

The Major was right about the Manor’s library. There was indeed all the information we could wish for on the subject of assassinations – failed and successful. I decided to go for the attempt on US President Ronald Reagan by John Hinkley Jr in March 1981.

Not only was it well documented in the library’s files, but I felt it gave me plenty to talk about on the subject of his close protection team – both good and bad. After all, Reagan’s secret service bodyguards had missed the fact that his would-be assassin had been hanging around all day outside the Washington Hilton Hotel looking highly suspicious.

On the plus side, when the attack did happen they’d reacted textbook fast. Three of them, including Reagan’s Press Secretary, had even managed to get themselves shot in the process.

The members of the team who were still left standing had bounced on Hinkley, while another had thrown their injured principal into his limo and hustled him away from the scene.

What I didn’t add, because it wasn’t included in the Manor’s information, was that if Hinkley had chosen a revolver with a longer barrel and a higher muzzle velocity than the Rohm R6-14 he’d been using, the explosive-head Devastator rounds he’d loaded might just have had the effect their name implied. Scratch another US president.

“So, Miss Fox, what conclusions do you draw from this?” Gilby asked when I’d finally ground to a halt.

“That Reagan’s close protection team were good in a crisis, but not so hot at planning and prevention,” I said. “They should never have let it happen in the first place. But, it does make Reagan unique – he’s the only serving US president to date who’s survived actually being shot by an assassin.”

He smiled. “Excellent,” he said, the praise pleasing me more than it should have done. “Who’s next?”

I regained my seat next to one of the tall windows that looked out over the rear of the house. Elsa stood up, gathering her file of papers, and walked to the front of the classroom. The students were all sitting at tables, but the instructors, including Gilby, had lined themselves up along the back wall.

They had listened to all the presentations so far, mine included, with poorly disguised boredom. I got the impression that this was one of Gilby’s pet ideas as far as the curriculum went and nobody else could see the value of it.

Elsa was the last to go. She reached the desk at the front and put her papers down neatly. “Good afternoon,” she said, sombre. “We have heard already about many famous events, but I would like to speak about one that is not in your library records. It is more recent, and not so well known. My subject is the abduction of a young girl called Heidi Krauss.”

The name meant nothing to me, but it was instantly apparent that it did to Gilby and his men. It was as though someone had passed an electrical current through the wall behind them. Every one of them jerked upright and Gilby even took a step forwards, as though he was going to try and prevent Elsa from speaking.

The German woman looked up. “Is there a problem, Major?” she asked, without inflection.

The rest of us followed the exchange like the crowd at a top-class tennis match, heads following each volley from one end of the room to the other. Gilby must have realised almost immediately that to stop her now was going to look more suspicious than letting her continue. “Of course not, Frau Schmitt, if you feel it’s relevant,” he said stiffly, allowing a trace of doubt to enter his voice.

Elsa brushed it aside. “She was taken from her own bed, in the middle of the night, from under the noses of her bodyguards,” she said, coolly now. “Yes, I think it is very relevant, don’t you?”

Gilby recognised defeat when it was staring him in the face. Without further demur he stepped back to his place and waved her to continue. I twisted round slightly in my chair so I could watch the instructors as much as Elsa.

The German woman had come well prepared for her lecture and she didn’t get it from the Manor library, that’s for sure. There was an elderly photocopier in there, which we’d all used to produce grainy pictures of our main protagonists, taken from the newspaper cuttings and books.

Elsa already had photographs, which meant she could only have brought them with her. She tacked a line of them up onto the dusty blackboard for us to see.

“This is Heidi Krauss,” she said, indicating an awkwardly posed studio picture of a girl who looked barely sixteen. “This is her father, Dieter, a successful and wealthy industrialist, and this is their home on the outskirts of Düsseldorf.”

She delivered the details in a flat, almost clinical style, the way I imagine she used to report to her superior officers when she’d been in the police. She hardly referred to her notes and barely glanced at Gilby or his men as she spoke.

Dieter Krauss, she told us, was away in the Middle East on the night his daughter had been kidnapped, just two weeks before Christmas. I realised with a jolt that she was talking about this Christmas. Heidi was at home with three household staff and four personal bodyguards. Of a Mrs Krauss, there was no mention.

There had been trouble with the movement sensors round the perimeter of the property. They had been badly adjusted so that small animals had been causing a number of false alarms. When the system was triggered again shortly before eleven on that evening, the man on duty did not immediately alert his colleagues to a possible security breach.

Instead, he had taken a torch and gone out alone through a side entrance to check the grounds for himself. There, a small force – more than four, it was reckoned, but less than eight – had overpowered him and gained entry through the open door.

Leaving a man guiding them towards Heidi’s location using the internal security cameras, the intruders had closed in on her. They had used a taser stunner to instantly incapacitate her, then wrapped her in a blanket and started to carry her out, with the rest of her security team oblivious in the next room.

Had the housekeeper not stepped out into a corridor at the wrong moment, that’s where the story would have ended. As it was, the woman started screaming. The intruders shot her in the neck, killing her almost instantly.

The close-protection team had responded immediately to the alert, drawing their own weapons, but they had been understandably reluctant to become involved in a gunfight when the risk of accidentally hitting their principal was so high.

Hamstrung in this way, they’d stood little chance. One of them was also shot and killed, while another received a leg wound which had resulted in amputation. They had exchanged fire but, Elsa reported, they were doubtful that they hit anyone. Certainly none of the intruders had been injured sufficiently to prevent their escape – with Heidi.

Elsa paused and looked around at us. She didn’t seem to be aware that she held the absolute attention not only of the class, but of the instructors as well. They had frozen up like a Madame Tussaud’s exhibit, only not so lifelike. If Gilby clamped his jaw shut any tighter he was going to shatter those perfect teeth.

“So, Frau Schmitt, what conclusions do you draw from this?” he managed to grit out from between them.

Elsa closed her folder and shrugged. “That the bodyguards were careless and that they totally underestimated the level of threat to their client,” she said at last.

Gilby took a breath as though he was fighting to control a temper that was rising like fire. He won, but I was sitting close enough to see the cost of that victory manifest itself in the tremor of a tiny muscle at the side of his jaw.

He nodded, jerky. “Very good, Frau Schmitt,” he bit out. His narrowed gaze swept across the rest of us, just in case we were thinking of making any smart remarks. “Class dismissed!”

He stalked out of the room with the instructors following him in a wave. I looked round and saw that most of the students were staring blankly at each other. Like me, they knew something was going on, but they had no idea what.

“Well, Elsa my darlin’, I don’t know what it is that you’ve said that should upset the Major so much,” Declan remarked as he got to his feet, “but I don’t think he’ll be round to bring you a cup of tea and a biscuit first thing tomorrow morning, that’s for sure.”