Siege

Thirty-five

AS WOLF MOVED to one side, Fox saw it immediately. An outstretched arm, hanging out from behind one of the interior doors. It belonged to a man, and it looked like there was a small patch of blood on his sleeve.

‘Go inside,’ Wolf told him.

Wrinkling his nose against the stale smell, Fox entered the suite. Keeping his gun pointed in front of him, he walked slowly through the foyer, and into the sitting room, stepping over the arm. It was then that he saw the full extent of the carnage.

There were three men in the room and they were all sprawled out on the shag-pile carpet. The one in the doorway, a well-built, well-dressed man in his early thirties, had had his throat cut, as had another guy, bigger, black, with a bald head and a sharp suit, who was lying on his back ten feet away. The third one looked Greek. He was older, with a thick head of dyed-black curly hair and an open-necked shirt and medallion combination that would have gone down a storm in 1987, when everyone got their fashion tips from Miami Vice, but now, frankly, looked ridiculous. He was propped up against a tan leather armchair with his head bowed, and Fox could see he’d been stabbed a number of times in the upper body. He took a deep breath. It reminded him of what Panther had looked like downstairs.

He lifted the man’s head up and saw that he too had a neck wound, although it was not as clean-cut or as deep as those on the others. The blood had stopped flowing from it, but it hadn’t yet coagulated, meaning he hadn’t been dead long.

He dropped the head and stood up, puzzled. It looked like Jack the Ripper had set to work in this room, yet he knew for a fact that none of his people had been up here, and even if they had, they would have used guns rather than knives. There were also very few signs of a struggle. The room was spacious, with exotic houseplants in pots at regular intervals along the walls, yet only one of them had been knocked over. It looked to Fox like all the men had been caught by surprise, and had died within seconds and feet of each other. It meant that whoever had killed them was good.

‘Well?’ said Wolf, coming into the room behind him.

Fox looked round the room one more time. ‘This is the work of the man who killed Leopard and Panther, I’m sure of it. And he’s a pro.’

He walked through to the bedroom and looked around. The bed was made and there didn’t appear to be anything out of place. ‘We need to ask the manager who it was who was staying here. That might give us some indication as to who we’re dealing with.’

Closing the doors of both suites, they made their way back to the emergency staircase. Wolf waited while Fox set a grenade booby-trap behind the door. If Special Forces landed on the roof and came in through the undefended top-floor windows, their arrival would be announced with a loud bang.

‘Don’t say anything about what’s happened up here,’ said Wolf as they headed down the stairs. ‘We don’t want to panic the men.’

Fox nodded. For once he agreed with him. They were unlucky to have attacked the hotel on the day that it contained a man who should have been working for, not against, them, but he knew there was no point in dwelling on this. In battle, events can conspire against you at every turn. The solution was to ride with them and make new plans.

As they walked back into the Park View Restaurant, Wolf nodded curtly at Dragon and Tiger, then called the hotel manager over.

She stood up reluctantly, and Wolf and Fox moved her to one side so that the other two couldn’t hear what was being said.

‘Do you have any soldiers staying here?’ Wolf whispered.

The manager frowned. ‘Not that I know of, but I don’t always know the details of the guest lists.’

‘Do any of your staff have military training?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Fox could see that her curiosity was piqued. ‘Who’s staying upstairs in the Garden Suite?’ he asked.

‘Mr Miller. He’s had the suite for most of the last two months. I think he’s going through a divorce.’

‘What does he do for a living?’

‘I think he’s some sort of businessman, but he keeps himself to himself.’

‘And does he have bodyguards?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, I believe he does. But that’s not unusual. We have a number of clients—’

‘Has he got any enemies?’

The manager looked puzzled. ‘No, why? Has anything happened?’

‘All right,’ snapped Wolf, pushing her away. ‘Sit back down, and don’t say a word to anyone.’

‘We need to make a change of plan,’ said Fox when she’d returned to where she’d been sitting. ‘We’ve lost two men, which leaves us with six. It’s not enough to hold hostages securely in three separate locations. We should keep the MI6 man apart, but we need to take the ones in here down to the ballroom.’

‘But the whole point is to keep them in different places. That way it’s far harder for the security forces to launch an assault.’

‘I know all that,’ said Fox, working hard to keep his voice quiet. ‘But if we keep the hostages up here we’re splitting our resources too much. In fact, it actually makes it easier for them to launch an assault. By now they’ll know we’ve brought people up here – it’ll have been caught on the TV cameras. But with the blinds down, they won’t know we’ve moved them, so they’ll still think we’ve got them in separate places.’

Wolf shook his head emphatically. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We stick to the plan.’

His pigheadedness irritated Fox, but he could hear the stubbornness in his voice, and knew he wouldn’t change his mind.

‘I’m doing the right thing,’ said Wolf. ‘You’ll see that. We’ll keep Dragon and Tiger up here, and Cat and Bear in the ballroom.’ He stopped and looked at his watch, his eyes lighting up. ‘It’s nearly twenty past,’ he said. ‘Time we began negotiations.’