Greed (15 page)

First base, thought Matt.

'Twenty phone calls, and the biggest diamond you ever saw,' said Gill. 'And then I might just think about it.'

Well, at least that can be arranged.

The street market in the centre of Limassol was thronging with people. The sun was beating down and there was a sharp smell of citrus fruits hanging in the air. Matt walked slowly through the crowds, his eyes scanning the stalls. Most of it was just the usual tourist junk: T-shirts, ornamental daggers, salad bowls and poorly made leather handbags. He paused over a knife, argued briefly with the shopkeeper about the price, then went on to the next stall.

Somewhere around here there must be a piece of jewellery or something to wear that Gill would really appreciate.

'Find anything?' said Cooksley.

'Shopping for
girls,'
said Matt. 'Almost impossible. No way to tell what they like and don't like.'

'Do you think Jane might like this?' Cooksley held up a brightly painted china salad bowl.

'For Christ's sake, no.'

The two men walked on in silence. Around them tourists were haggling, stallholders shouting, and a few locals out shopping. The sun was beating down, and as midday approached the temperature was starting to rise, but it was not yet uncomfortably hot. What's the rush? Matt thought. We've got a whole week to sit around Limassol buying presents. I might as well take my time. 'How about a beer down by the port?' he said. 'We can shop tomorrow or the next day.'

It was a ten-minute walk, through the main tourist districts, down to where the boats docked. Matt had been stationed in Cyprus for a couple of months of his Army stint, and the docks were the part of town he liked best. He could sit for hours drinking a beer and watching the ferries that worked the Aegean Sea, connecting the hundreds of tiny islands scattered between here, Turkey and Greece.

If I wasn't a soldier, I would have been quite happy to have been a ferryman. That's an honest, outdoor trade.

They stepped into the street. A few metres in front of them, a Mitsubishi Shogun suddenly swerved away from the kerb, its engine revving furiously. Matt pulled Cooksley back, tugging at the sleeve of his T-shirt, but it was too late – the car winged the side of his hip, sending him crashing on to the road, his body sprawled across the tarmac. The car stopped ten metres away as the driver slammed on the brakes. Matt started running towards it, shouting at the idiot at the wheel. Then he heard the sound of rubber screeching against tarmac and realised that the car was on the move again – in reverse.

The bastard was trying to drive back over Cooksley.

Matt dived on to the road, grabbed Cooksley by the neck and somehow managed to heave and roll his body across the road and into the gutter. He dived with him, and through the corner of his eye he saw the big, thick tyres of the Shogun crunching past him, missing them both by just a few inches. The driver slammed on the brakes again, the engine revved and roared as reverse was thrown into first gear, then the vehicle started moving forwards again. Matt had to use all his strength to roll a few more inches, drag both their bodies on to the pavement. Around him, he could hear people shouting and screaming. The Shogun's tyres slammed hard into the kerb and it bounced backwards. People started to crowd around them, but for a moment Matt could see the man sitting behind the wheel. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second, and Matt could feel the hatred pouring out of him.

Then the Shogun reversed, turned and disappeared up the street.

'What happened?' said Cooksley.

'Somebody just tried to kill you,' said Matt.

The mood around the table was sombre. They were sitting towards the back of the pool area, far enough away from the crowds that no one would hear what they were saying. Cooksley was wearing a bandage down the side of his face. He was bruised along his neck and arms, and there were plasters stuck on to three separate cuts. He would be OK, Matt had made sure of that. He had cleaned and dressed men with bullets through them, and a few cuts were not going to kill anyone. Certainly not a man of Cooksley's strength.

'You're sure somebody was trying to kill you?' said Damien.

'It was an attempted assassination, no question,' said Matt. 'We've all seen them close enough to know what they look like. This guy drove the car straight at Cooksley. Then he reverses, and tries to back over him. The first time could have been an accident. But the second time, no way.' He paused. 'Anyway, I saw his eyes. Looked like a rag-head.'

Reid shook his head, banging his fist on the table. 'I say we find him and we kill him.'

'Find him?' said Matt, shrugging. 'Where? He was driving a red Mitsubishi Shogun, I can tell you that. I didn't see the number plate – and anyway, I don't know how to trace cars in Cyprus.'

'The question,' said Ivan, 'is who would want to kill Cooksley?' He looked towards him. 'Well?'

Cooksley looked straight back. 'I don't know,' he answered. 'There isn't anybody, and anyway, nobody knows I'm here, except for us. Not even my wife.'

'Al-Qaeda,' said Damien. 'They're on to us already.'

'But how would they know it's us?' asked Cooksley. 'We killed all the buggers on the boat. Al-Qaeda have probably only just discovered it's missing. How the fuck could they find us?'

'Maybe it's someone after our money,' said Matt. 'Maybe someone saw us stashing the gear into the Land Rover and decided to take a bit of it for themselves.'

'What about your fence?' said Ivan to Damien. 'Does he know something?'

'That couldn't happen,' snapped Damien.

'He's a fucking gangster, isn't he?' said Reid. 'He knows we just nicked thirty million. He kills us off, and gets to pocket all of the loot for himself. Sounds like a good plan to me.'

'It's not just soldiers that have standards,' Damien replied angrily. 'Villains have them too. Our code is even stronger than yours. It's impossible for a fence to do something like that – he'd be cutting his own throat.' He paused. 'Anyway, like I said, he doesn't know who or where we are. I haven't told him. All he knows is a big shipment is coming in next week. From somewhere. Anyway, Matt said it was an Arab.'

There was silence around the table, as if they were all turning over different possibilities. Over by the pool, Matt could see a girl getting thrown into the water by a pair of boys. Suddenly he wished he could be somewhere else.

'Ivan spoke to someone,' Reid said, looking around the table. 'I saw him.'

Matt noticed four sets of eyes turn across the table and settle on Ivan. The rules had been made quite clear: they would speak to no one until the mission was complete. Nobody must know where they were until the loot was fenced and the money banked.

I broke the rule myself when I spoke to Gill.

'Is it true?' said Cooksley. 'Did you speak to someone?'

Ivan raised his head. There was a look in his eyes Matt hadn't seen before: part fear, part embarrassment and part defiance. 'I had to call home,' he said. 'My wife and kids have been taken.'

'What?' said Matt.

'The organisation has taken them,' said Ivan. 'The one I used to work for.'

'Why?' said Matt. 'Has your cover been blown? Do they know you've been turned by Five?'

'I don't think so, but I took the Semtex we needed for this mission from one of their dumps,' Ivan answered. 'The IRA are meant to have decommissioned their weapons, but there is still plenty left. I guess they discovered I'd lifted some, put two and two together and decided it was for a private job. So they've taken Mary and the kids, and they want my share of the money. If I give it to them, they'll let her go.' He paused. 'The Provos like to keep a monopoly. Nobody is allowed to start freelancing.'

'You reckon they know you've been turned?' said Matt.

'Mary called me and told me all about it,' Ivan said. 'Said they knew I was doing a robbery, that's all, and they wanted the money.'

'I thought we'd agreed no contact,' said Damien. 'How did she know where to get hold of you?'

'She sent me a text message, then I called her back, simple as that.' He looked around the men at the table. 'Of course I left a way for her to get hold of me. I bet all of you have done the same.'

'Not me,' snapped Damien. 'I stick to my word.'

'And you guys?' said Ivan.

'I haven't spoken to Jane, but, yes, my mobile is switched on a couple of times a day,' said Cooksley. 'She could leave a message if there was an emergency.'

Reid nodded. 'Same here,' he said. 'You never know. Something might happen to the kids.'

Matt leant forwards on the table. 'If it's confession time – I called Gill,' he said. 'But I didn't tell her where I was.'

Ivan leant forwards, his elbows leaning on the table, the lines on his forehead creasing up. 'Let me get this straight, you spoke to your girlfriend?'

'I didn't tell her where we are,' Matt repeated.

'You owe a lot of money to a Russian gangster, Matt,' Ivan said. 'If he knew how much money you'd just taken, he'd be after you.' He paused, looking around the pool area. 'This is Cyprus. The place is crawling with Russian mafia, in case you hadn't noticed the accents in the bar. It's where they come for their winter holidays.'

'Let's get back to you, Ivan,' Reid said, his face reddening. 'If the PIRA know how much money we have, they'll be after the lot of us. Those guys would kill us for free, never mind thirty million. It's
you
that's the problem, you have been right from the start.'

'He's right,' chipped in Cooksley.

Ivan raised his hands into the air. 'I'm not defending myself,' he said. 'Nobody is more worried about this than me. But I fight my own battles. If there's a problem, I'll fix it.'

'Once a traitor, always a traitor,' said Reid, stubbing out a cigarette into an already bulging ashtray.

Ivan turned to look at Matt. 'Look, it was an Arab driving the car, you say?'

Matt nodded.

'Not an Irishman then. The Provos wouldn't go after Cooksley. They'd come after me.'

The first sign of trouble, and everyone starts turning on each other.

'So we have four possibilities,' Damien interrupted. 'It could be al-Qaeda, it could be a local gang, it could be the IRA, or it could be the Russian mafia. Either way, you know what that says to me?' He looked around the table, meeting the eyes of each man in turn. 'We get the hell out of here. Because whichever of those four it is, they already know where we are, and I don't want to be around when they catch up with us.'

Sallum parked the Lexus LS430 in the bay, next to the Fords, Vauxhalls and Rovers. A light drizzle was falling. Dark clouds had gathered in the sky, and even though it was only three-thirty in the afternoon, the night seemed to have started to draw in. He slammed the door shut, pocketed the keys, then walked swiftly towards the factory and the main office.

For Ibrahim bin Assaf himself to have asked to see him in person, he knew it had to be important. Field operatives rarely had any direct contact with their masters. That was not how the organisation worked.

Assaf Foods occupied a sprawling factory and warehouse on the outskirts of West Bromwich, close to Birmingham. It made Indian ready-meals for supermarkets, irradiated chicken tikka masala that sat in the microwave for five minutes. Assaf had started the business twenty years ago as a young Pakistani immigrant. Now he was one of the wealthiest, most respected figures in the British Muslim community.

If only they knew,
thought Sallum as he strode across the factory floor.
The infidels wouldn't be so keen on their curries then.

He sat for a moment in the waiting room, glancing out to the floor below. He could see the giant machines slicing the battery chickens, spitting out the bones and throwing the remnants into huge bins. Machine cutters were dicing vegetables, and conveyor belts dropped spices into huge vats of oil and grease. A small cloud of smoke hung over the factory, and the rich smell of raw curry powder infiltrated the building.

Disgusting. A nation that has forgotten how to cook for itself has also forgotten how to defend itself. That is why they are weak and we are strong.

'Sallum
alakim,'
said Assaf, standing up from his desk and shaking Sallum warmly by the hand. 'You are well, my brother?'

Assaf was a short, compact man who looked younger than his fifty-three years. His hair was greying but still thick, and although there were lines around his forehead his skin was still smooth and velvety. His eyes were set deep into his head, and his long nose raked out from the centre of his face. He had bearing and presence, Sallum observed, and a natural sense of command. Yet at the same time, he was discreet: you wouldn't notice him until he meant to put you under his spell. That was probably what made him such a successful businessman.