False Friends (18 page)

Shepherd forced himself to appear relaxed. ‘I can get you four hundred. Give me a month and I could probably get you four thousand.’ He took a pul on his cigar and held the smoke in his mouth rather than inhaling before blowing it out. ‘A grand each. So forty grand.’

‘Pounds?’

Shepherd frowned. ‘Of course, pounds. What do you think I meant? Roubles? Rupees?’

‘A grand each, though,’ said Kettering. ‘That’s more than we thought.’

Thompson returned with four brandy glasses and he handed them out.

‘Garry here says a grand each,’ Kettering said to Thompson.

‘Fuck me,’ said Thompson. ‘That’s about three times what we thought we’d have to pay.’

‘What, Googled it, did you?’ Shepherd chuckled. ‘It’s like buying bubbly, mate. You get what you pay for. If you want Bol y or Cristal you pay top price. If you want a bottle of fizzy white wine then you piss off down to Tesco with a tenner in your hot little hand.’

‘You can get a second-hand Romanian knock-off for a couple of hundred quid,’ said Sharpe. ‘But it won’t be new and you won’t know whether or not it’s going to blow up in your hands. We’ve got the real thing, brand new and stil in their boxes, never been fired.’

Shepherd nodded in agreement. ‘We only sel good gear,’ he said. ‘No one has ever complained about our product.’ He sipped his brandy.

‘But a grand,’ said Kettering. ‘That’s steep.’

‘Plus the ammunition,’ said Shepherd.

‘How much?’

‘Again, depends on how much you want. We can do you a good deal if you want to bulk buy.’

‘We do,’ said Thompson. ‘The more the merrier.’

‘And these guns, where do you get them from?’

‘Not thinking about trying to cut out the middleman, are you?’ asked Shepherd. ‘Because that’s a dangerous game to be playing in this business.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Kettering. ‘Jeez, you’re a suspicious bugger. I just meant where do they come from? Russia? China?’ He flicked ash into the street.

‘I wouldn’t sel you a Chinese gun,’ said Shepherd. ‘Pile of crap, they are. As bad as the Romanians. No, mate, we’ve got the Rol s-Royce of the AK. Made in the former Yugoslavia. Serbia. Google the Yugo and you’l see what I mean. Everybody loves them.’

‘The Yugo’s a car, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, but I’m sure you’l be able to tel the difference,’ said Shepherd. ‘Our Yugos are the ones that go bang.’

‘I thought the best AK-47s were the originals, the Russian ones,’ said Thompson.

‘Nah, the Yugo’s better, no question,’ said Shepherd.

‘And you can get us forty?’ asked Kettering.

‘Like I said, forty or four thousand.’

‘What, you get them from the factory?’

‘Where I get them from isn’t the issue, mate,’ said Shepherd. ‘The issue is you paying for them.’

‘Cash?’

Shepherd laughed. ‘No, mate, Amex wil do nicely.’ His face went hard. ‘Of course, cash. But if you’ve got krugerrands I’l take them.’

‘Krugerrands?’

‘Gold,’ said Shepherd.

‘We can get the cash,’ said Thompson.

‘Glad to hear it,’ said Shepherd. ‘So we’re agreed on forty? For forty grand?’

Kettering nodded. ‘And the ammo.’

‘I can let you have the ammo for £50 a box.’

‘And how many bul ets in a box?’ asked Thompson.

‘We cal them rounds,’ said Shepherd. ‘Or cartridges. And there’s a hundred in a box.’

‘So a bul et – I mean a round – costs fifty pence?’

‘I guess you were good at maths at school,’ said Sharpe. He grinned over at Shepherd and they both laughed.

‘Yeah, fifty pence each,’ said Shepherd.

‘That’s bloody expensive,’ said Kettering.

A couple went by, a man in a cashmere coat walking arm in arm with his fur-coat-wearing wife, and the men stopped speaking until the couple were out of earshot.

‘Yeah, wel , it’s not as if you can drop into B&Q and buy a few boxes, is it?’ said Shepherd. ‘It al has to be brought in from the Continent and there are risks and costs. Plus, you need special rounds, 7.62 by 39 mil imetre. They’re not easy to come by in this country. Most of the ammo you’l be offered is nine mil or .22 so it’s pretty much a sel er’s market for the AK-47 ammo.’ He shrugged. ‘You’re welcome to see if anyone else can get you the rounds cheaper but I can tel you now you’l be wasting your time.’

‘Plus, there are quality-control issues,’ said Sharpe. ‘We’ve got a saying. Guns don’t jam; ammunition jams. It doesn’t matter how good the gun is, if you start using it to fire crap ammo then your weapon is going to jam. And that can ruin your whole day.’

Kettering nodded thoughtful y. ‘We’l need about twenty thousand rounds,’ he said. ‘So two hundred boxes.’

Shepherd’s jaw dropped. ‘Two hundred boxes? That’s five hundred rounds per gun, right?’

‘Is that a problem?’

Shepherd looked across at Sharpe. The same thought was obviously going through his partner’s mind. Why would anyone want to buy twenty thousand rounds?

‘If you’ve got the ten grand it’s no problem at al .’ Shepherd took a long pul on his cigar.

‘What about a discount?’ asked Thompson.

‘As you’re such a good customer, you can have the ammo for eight grand,’ said Shepherd. ‘We’re looking at a total of forty-eight grand.’

‘How about we split the difference and cal it forty-five?’ said Kettering. ‘Seeing as how I’m buying the Bol y?’

‘Forty-five it is,’ said Shepherd. ‘But, mate, what are you going to be doing with twenty thousand rounds?’

‘Self-protection,’ said Kettering.

‘From what? The bloody army?’

‘Look, you said the ammunition was hard to get hold of. I don’t want to be coming back to you for more.’

‘You know the magazine only holds thirty rounds?’ said Sharpe.

‘So?’ said Kettering.

‘Just thought I’d mention it. I mean, twenty thousand rounds is a lot of ammo. Are you planning to fire them at the same time?’

Kettering shrugged. ‘Why?’

‘Because it takes time to reload,’ said Sharpe. ‘You can fire thirty rounds with one pul of the trigger if you’re on ful y automatic. Then you’ve got to start slotting in fresh rounds one at a time.’

‘What he means is that if you’re planning to fire off a lot of rounds you’re better off with pre-loaded magazines,’ said Shepherd.

Kettering nodded slowly. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I get it. You mean we put the rounds in magazines and then just shove in a new one when the old one’s empty.’

‘Click, clack,’ said Sharpe. ‘It’s as easy as that.’

‘We can do you polymer magazines at thirty quid a pop,’ said Shepherd.

Kettering looked over at Thompson. Thompson pul ed a face.

‘What if we wanted ten magazines for each gun?’ said Kettering.

‘Sure. Four hundred magazines. We can do that.’

‘But that would be twelve grand,’ said Thompson. ‘That’s a bit bloody steep for magazines.’

‘But you can give us a discount, right?’ Kettering said to Shepherd. ‘They’re only plastic.’

‘Polymer,’ said Shepherd. ‘As good as the metal ones and lighter. But that’s what they cost. How about we say four hundred for ten grand? So al in, guns, ammo and clips, fifty-five grand.’

‘Fifty for cash?’ said Kettering.

Shepherd laughed. ‘I already said it was cash or gold,’ he said. ‘Fifty-five is my bottom price. What about handguns? I can get you Zastava pistols from the same source. Easier to conceal than an AK-47.’

‘Don’t real y see the point of a handgun,’ said Kettering. ‘Seems to me that if you’re going to be using a gun people need to see it. So the bigger the better.’ He grinned. ‘How about we cal it fifty-two grand and I’l get you some gloves signed by John Conteh?’

Shepherd nodded. ‘You love to haggle, don’t you? Okay.’

Kettering held out his glass and the three other men fol owed suit. ‘Pleasure doing business with you,’ he said.

‘The pleasure’s al ours,’ said Sharpe. They clinked glasses and drank.

‘You can get anything, can you?’ asked Kettering.

‘Pretty much,’ said Shepherd. ‘I sold a couple of tanks once.’

Kettering laughed. ‘A tank I don’t need, but I could do with bul etproof vests.’

‘That’s easy enough,’ said Shepherd. ‘Let me come back to you with a price. What sort do you want?’

‘What are the options?’

‘Depends on what sort of protection you want. They go from cheaper ones that wil stop a .22 and not much else, right up to vests with steel plates that’l stop a .45 at point-blank range.’

‘Yeah, the ful Monty,’ said Kettering. ‘That’s what we need.’

‘No problem,’ said Shepherd.

‘And what about grenades?’

Shepherd stiffened and Sharpe’s mouth opened in surprise.

‘What?’ said Sharpe.

‘Grenades,’ said Thompson. He looked over his shoulder to check that no one could overhear their conversation. ‘Can you get us some?’

‘What the hel do you want with grenades?’ asked Sharpe.

‘What’s it to you?’ snapped Thompson.

‘James means it’s a bit unusual, that’s al ,’ said Shepherd. ‘We don’t get much cal for grenades. They’re a bit . . . specialist.’

‘But you can get them, right?’ asked Kettering. ‘We’l pay good money.’

‘I’l talk to some people, see what I can do,’ said Shepherd. ‘And you’re talking fragmentation grenades, right? You don’t mean smoke grenades or flash-bangs?’

‘Yeah, the real thing is what we want,’ said Kettering. ‘And about the guns. We’re going to need a test fire.’

‘We can arrange that,’ said Shepherd.

‘Up near us?’ said Kettering. ‘I want to bring a couple of guys with us, just to show what we’re buying.’

‘Just make sure they’re people you can trust,’ said Shepherd. ‘And we’l need to arrange the venue. We’l pick you up and take you to wherever we do it.’

‘You don’t trust us?’ said Thompson.

‘I don’t trust anybody,’ said Shepherd. ‘If I get caught with a boot ful of AK-47s then I’m banged up for ten years. So forgive me if I’m careful.’

‘I get it,’ said Kettering. ‘But no one is going to screw you over. We want those guns.’

‘How long after the test fire wil you have the forty?’ asked Thompson.

Shepherd looked at Sharpe. ‘A week?’

‘A week to ten days,’ said Sharpe. ‘We can cover it from stock in the warehouse but I’l need to arrange a cover consignment.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Kettering.

‘We put the guns in the base of a container, but we have to fil the container with a legitimate cargo. Fruit or veg is the best. Ideal y we have the van in a convoy of legit trucks. Soon as we have a delivery date we’l let you know.’

‘And you’l deliver them to us in Birmingham?’

‘We’l arrange a drop-off wherever you want, but again we won’t tel you until the last moment. You check the guns, we check the cash, and Bob’s your father’s brother.’

‘So we’ve got a deal?’ asked Kettering.

Shepherd nodded. ‘Looks like it.’

Kettering beamed. He clinked his glass against Shepherd’s again and finished his brandy. ‘Let’s get back inside and watch the boxing,’ he said.

Shepherd waited until he was back in his Hampstead flat before phoning Hargrove. ‘It’s on,’ he said. ‘We’ve agreed a price and they want a test fire.’

‘Wel done,’ said Hargrove.

‘The thing is, they want forty AK-47s and a stack of ammo. And hand grenades.’

‘Hand grenades?’

‘Yeah. How do we want to play this?’

‘Did they say what they want with grenades?’

‘Said it wasn’t our business, which is probably right. We’re arms dealers so why the hel would we care what they’re going to do with them?’

‘Ray didn’t say anything about grenades,’ said Hargrove. ‘And he didn’t say anything about forty AK-47s. What are they planning, a war?’

‘I don’t think Ray’s ful y in the loop,’ said Shepherd. ‘If he was they’d have had him along tonight. They want assault rifles, bul etproof vests and grenades. I tried asking him why they wanted that much ordnance but they didn’t say and I didn’t want to push it because it was our first meeting.’

‘Did you get a read on them?’

‘Kettering’s not a nutter, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t have marked him down as a criminal. Looks more like an estate agent. Clean cut, bit of a Jack the Lad, maybe. Thompson’s a bit harder but even so I wouldn’t have thought he’d be the type to go on a murder spree.’

‘Could it be racial?’

Shepherd sighed. ‘I real y don’t know what’s going on in their heads,’ he said. ‘At one point Thompson went over and had his photograph taken next to John Conteh. And one of the boxers they brought down from Birmingham was a Jamaican lad. If they’re racists they’re doing a bloody good job of hiding it.’

‘Could they be resel ing?’

‘It’s possible, but at the prices I was quoting I doubt there’d be much profit left for them. It’s the grenades that worry me. Guns, even assault rifles, can be used for defence. But there’s nothing defensive about a grenade.’

‘I doubt we’l be getting to the point where we actual y give them grenades,’ said Hargrove.

‘That may be, but they’re going to want a test fire before we get their money, and they’re going to want to see a grenade.’

‘Do you have any thoughts on that front?’

Shepherd laughed. ‘I’m starting to realise why you wanted me on this op,’ he said.

‘I wanted you because you’re the best undercover agent around,’ said Hargrove. ‘But your inside track with the SAS would certainly be a help. If they’re stil happy to supply us with the guns would you ask if they could lend us a grenade or two?’

‘I’l run it by them,’ said Shepherd. ‘Do you want to tel the superintendent that the case has moved up a notch?’

‘I think we have to,’ said Hargrove. ‘We’ve gone from a couple of wideboys buying a few guns to something much more serious. I’l have a word with Fenby too. I want to know how the hel he managed to miss the fact that they’re looking to equip a smal army.’

‘I don’t think it’s Ray’s fault,’ said Shepherd. ‘They were sounding us out, making sure we could be trusted, and the question of numbers came up when we were discussing price. They wanted a discount for volume.’

‘And you gave them a price for a grenade?’

‘I said I’d put out some feelers. I figured it’d be best not to appear too keen.’