Present Danger

30

Through the cloth bag over his head Dave couldn’t see a thing. But he knew where he was, and that scared him.

During the drive from Milraud’s shop, as he lay in the boot of the car, with his hands tied, he had concentrated hard on the sounds of the vehicle on the road. The journey took about an hour by his reckoning, first on fast roads, then for about twenty minutes on smaller ones, where the car stopped and started at junctions or traffic lights. Then they’d turned onto a rougher surface – some sort of track.

They could have been anywhere in the countryside of Northern Ireland. But then, just before the car stopped and he was bundled out, he heard a sound that he recognised – a noise he’d heard before when he was with Liz Carlyle. It was the squeak and bang of an electronic gate, the gate on the National Trust estate.

So he must be in Piggott’s house in County Down – the house of the man who, as Brown Fox had told him, wanted to kill an MI5 officer. Until then Dave had thought he was either the victim of a kidnapping, or of a mistake. Now he realised he could be about to die.

He’d been lifted out of the boot of the car, put on his two feet and led into a house, bumping his shoulder against what felt like a door frame. Then he’d been walked down a flight of stairs and deposited unceremoniously on a hard chair. He’d been sitting there for a minute or two, not sure who was around him, trying to get his bearings and cope with the fear that was growing with each second he waited.

Suddenly, rough hands removed the bag from his head. He looked up into the dark face of the man who had walked into Milraud’s shop and pulled a gun on him, the same man he had seen here, outside this house, when he and Liz had walked on the headland. Piggott’s foreign-looking henchman.

Dave blinked in the sudden light and looked around the room, taking in the comfortable furnishings, the large desk, the leatherbound books in the bookcases and, incongruously, the camp bed in the corner. This must be Piggott’s study, but why the bed?

Dave cursed himself for having gone to see Milraud without any back-up. Not just once, but twice. How could he have been so stupid, acting like a complete amateur? He should have listened to Judith and waited for Liz to get back. He had always known that danger was part of his job, and he liked to think that he conducted himself professionally, and without fear. No, that wasn’t right – only a fool never felt fear. But he had learned to ignore the fear, and never to let it get in the way of doing his job. So it seemed a bitter irony that he had fallen into a trap he’d set for other people, as a result of his own foolishness.

But it was too late for regrets. They hadn’t killed him yet – could they believe he was just a harmless collector? Maybe the dark-faced thug had not recognised him from their earlier encounter?

For a moment he nursed these seedlings of hope, but he was too much of a realist to let them take root. If they really did see him as harmless, then why had he been held at gunpoint, then taken forcibly from the shop? He thought gloomily about what they were going to do to him (just let it be quick, he prayed), when he suddenly felt agonising pain splay across his face – the foreign man had ripped the tape roughly from his mouth. Then, pulling a flick knife from his pocket, the man reached down and swiftly cut the cords binding Dave’s arms.

The blood rushing back into Dave’s joints hurt a lot, and his arms and muscles ached from his cramped position in the boot of the car. He gingerly moved his legs, but he stayed sitting in the chair while the dark face watched him expressionlessly, holding a gun pointed directly at his head.

He heard footsteps behind him and the tall, spare figure of Seamus Piggott appeared with another man. Dave recognised his face from the A4 surveillance – Malone. Malone was carrying an old-fashioned doctors’ bag. Turning his head, Dave saw for the first time that Milraud was also in the room, standing in the corner, looking studiously detached, like a surgeon called in to witness a colleague’s operation. Dave was tempted to ask the Frenchman what the price of a derringer was now, but realised sarcasm might simply accelerate whatever they planned to do to him. So he kept quiet.

Piggott said nothing, and didn’t even look at Dave as he walked over to the desk. Malone put the bag down and Piggott rummaged in it for a moment, then his hands emerged holding a rubber tube in one hand and a syringe in the other. He handed the tube to Malone, who walked over and grabbed hold of Dave’s right arm from the side – keeping out of the line of fire from the Spaniard’s gun.

Now Dave panicked: this was how they were going to kill him. He hated needles, which made the prospect of a lethal injection even more terrifying. He shouted ‘No!’ and tried to wriggle free from the strong grip on his arms, but his legs felt like jelly and he hadn’t the strength even to try and stand up. His shirt sleeve was swiftly forced up above his elbow and Malone tied the rubber tube tightly around his upper arm. Dave struggled frantically but Malone stood to one side and the Spaniard stepped forward, sticking the gun frighteningly close to Dave’s face.

As Dave sank back in his chair, Piggott walked briskly from the desk and before Dave could move, plunged the syringe directly into the bulging vein of his bicep. Dave felt a cold sensation in his arm as the liquid moved into his bloodstream, followed almost immediately by a gentle lethargy that seemed to take him over. He was only partly aware of being stood up and frogmarched over to the bed, then put prone on the mattress, and strapped to the frame. He found himself incapable of resisting, and he didn’t even want to.

A strong wind was gusting across the bay, whipping the sea into white-crested waves and blowing open Milraud’s grey checked jacket. The fine cashmere sweater he wore underneath was not designed to cope with these temperatures, and he shivered as he walked down to the wooden jetty that jutted out into the small cove.

A substantial rigid inflatable dinghy was moored up firmly, rocking in the water’s chop, its fenders rubbing against the wooden struts. Much further out, in the mouth of the bay, a large motor cruiser was anchored. At first sight, with its gleaming white paint and aluminium rails, it looked like the sort of rich man’s toy that is ten a penny in the Mediterranean, but Milraud recognised the wide bow and strong lines of a boat designed for rougher seas and longer trips than cruising the usually calm waters of the Mediterranean. He knew that this boat made regular voyages to pick up the goods that James Purnell (or Piggott as he supposed he should call him here in Northern Ireland) imported and sold, under the cover of his consultancy company.

As he gazed out to sea, Milraud’s mind was racing. He was used to dealing with the unexpected and turning it to his advantage, but the events of the last twenty-four hours had thrown him off balance. Ever since Gonzales had marched into the shop, he had been trying to keep things under control.

The Spaniard had been told to wait for Willis to leave, then follow him to try to find out who he was. But Gonzales had got his signals crossed, and had come into the back room where the Englishman had been sitting. At that point it would still have been possible to terminate the meeting and let him go – indeed, the man had actually started to make his excuses and leave. But Gonzales had pulled a gun. He’d said later that he could tell that the man recognised him, as if that somehow justified what he had done.

After that, there was no way they could let Simon Willis leave. If he was MI5, he would have been back five minutes later with a posse of armed policemen. Milraud had alerted Piggott, and the American had instructed Gonzales to bring the Englishman down here to the house in the bay. He was now lying, half-comatose and strapped to a bed in the basement room.

You had to admire his cool, thought Milraud, as he watched a cormorant swoop down and pluck a fish the size of a sardine from an oncoming wave. He thought about how Willis had sat in the back office guest chair in Belfast, seemingly unfazed by the 9 mm handgun Gonzales was waving in his face, sticking to his story – he was a collector of derringers. When it was suggested he had really come on behalf of the UK security services, Willis had looked at them all as if they were mad. It was almost a convincing performance.

They’d bundled him, hands tied, head enveloped by a sack, his mouth covered in thick strips of parcel tape, out of the back door of the shop and into the boot of the car brought round by one of Piggott’s men. Milraud had followed with Piggott, and an hour later they had arrived here, and installed their unexpected visitor in the basement room. When Gonzales had untied him and taken off the tape, Willis had relaxed slightly.

He hadn’t stayed relaxed for long, not after Malone had come in with his bag. At this point Milraud had left the room. He wished he had left earlier, though either way he was already implicated in everything that had gone on.

It was a fallacy that ‘truth serum’ could serve as a kind of cranial diuretic, flushing out of the brain all those things an undrugged person would never admit to. But what it did do, in the hands of an intelligent practitioner, could be just as revealing. Willis had apparently not told them anything directly, but nor had he shown the blanket ignorance he should have displayed if he had been the innocent collector he claimed to be. And he’d nodded drowsily at names he should not have found familiar. Any lingering doubt about Willis’s true vocation had been dispelled.

But what was on Milraud’s mind now was how to get out of this situation where he was party to the abduction of a British intelligence officer. And possibly to something worse than abduction, if he could not control Piggott/Purnell.

It was nearly dark now and getting colder. As Milraud turned to go back inside, he saw the American coming towards him from the direction of the house. His leather jacket could not have given him much protection from the wind but he walked upright, with his long strides, tall and lean, apparently impervious to the cold. It struck Milraud that the man seemed indifferent to so many things: clothes, food, women – all the aspects of life that Milraud enjoyed most. He knew there were things his associate cared about – there had to be, since nothing else could explain some of his actions. But the Frenchman did not know what those passions were, so buried were they beneath an almost perversely cold demeanour.

Nor did he think of trying to find out. Milraud was in a business where you did not enquire about your clients’ motives or even their actions. You supplied them with the goods they requested and what they did with them was their own business. But now, through no fault of his, he found himself in a situation he had so far successfully avoided – involved in someone else’s affairs.

Piggott said, ‘There’s a simple way of dealing with this, you know.’

Nothing was simple anymore, thought Milraud, but he made a show of being willing to consider this. ‘What’s that, James?’

‘Let Gonzales take care of the problem. There’s no danger then of Willis ever talking. And we don’t have to worry about what to do with him.’

Milraud looked out to sea, rough enough that day to keep most craft firmly on shore. He thought he saw a tanker chugging south and east towards England, but in the evening light he could not be sure.

‘Too late for that,’ he said tersely, though just the idea of killing Willis made him feel sick. Milraud had a large, successful business which was now in peril; the last thing he needed was the prospect of a life sentence for murder. He said to Piggott, ‘Listen James, it’s bad enough as it is, thanks to Gonzales. Willis’s people will soon find out that he came to see me, if they didn’t know beforehand, which I expect they did. It won’t take them long to get onto you too, once they start investigating, and then they’ll be swarming over this place. Even as things stand I have to get out of here and I suggest you do too.’

He wondered how long he could count on Mrs Carson back at the shop to play dumb. Probably longer than he feared, but not long enough – for his business at any rate. He’d have to write off the shop and stay out of Northern Ireland. Otherwise, the authorities here would be all over him. Whereas if he could get back to France, slipping under their guard, it would be a while before they caught up with him. Eventually, the British would find him in Toulon and send someone over. But they had no evidence of anything substantial, certainly not enough even to try to extradite him.

He should be all right. Unless he listened to Piggott. The man had drawn him into some vendetta of his own, and Milraud resented that. Phoning him with that preposterous accusation that Milraud was working with MI5, and now suggesting a course of action that would have the British authorities down on them both like a ton of bricks. Because if the British could connect him with the murder of Willis they would never let the matter go: Milraud would be looking around corners for the rest of his life. The British were tenacious bastards. Especially if you hurt one of their own.

But recriminations had been pointless then and were pointless now, as well as potentially dangerous – Milraud sensed an only half-submerged menace in the American which he was wary of. If they were ever to cross swords, Milraud wanted it to be on his home ground. Another good reason for his plan.

‘We should make Plymouth on the first day and I reckon we’ll be through the Straits of Gibraltar in five days and in Toulon within a week. It gives us some breathing space.’

‘But why take this extra baggage with us?’ asked Piggott. ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler if we just left it behind? Especially since it couldn’t tell any tales.’ His voice was soft but insistent.

‘Listen,’ Milraud said sharply, realising he was betraying his own agitation. ‘If we kill an MI5 man, we’ll put everything at risk.’ He looked at Piggott and what he saw chilled him. The man was completely unmoved, undeterred. Something was driving him that Milraud hadn’t understood.

Piggott went on: ‘What are we going to do with him in France, then? You can’t exactly put him to work in your shop. And are we going to keep him drugged for six days on the boat?’

‘We may not need to. We can lock him up. He can’t go far at sea. Think of him as a commodity,’ said Milraud, sticking to business. ‘This particular commodity has considerable value.’

‘To MI5? You think we can ransom him to his own people?’

‘That’s possible, but I wouldn’t advise trying. Much better to sell him off to the highest bidder. Let someone else hold him. That will take the heat off us soon enough.’ Milraud had contacts in several countries who might well be pleased to buy Willis. He’d make an attractive hostage. ‘But meanwhile, we need to move our commodity to a safe place.’

‘When do you want to leave?’

‘We need to move fast. The next high tide is just after midnight. We should go then.’

Piggott thought about this, but his face showed no expression. Finally he gave a curt nod in agreement. ‘I’ve some business to finish up before we leave. I’ll go with Malone back into town to bring down another “commodity”. But this one will be staying here. Permanently.’

And seeing the set expression on the other man’s face, Milraud decided not to argue. At some point he would have to find a way of betraying Piggott to the authorities, or else Piggott would drag him down with him. But Milraud was going to pick the time and place for that. Meanwhile he was looking forward to being back in France.