Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men) (15 page)

There was no immediate response and Macpherson did not wait for the inevitable speculation.

“Since there are no clues at all,” he continued, “other than the probable involvement of the SAS in some unknown context, I suggest we send a suitable Local, if there is one, with a brief to watch the suspect’s actions in Muscat and learn what he can.”

“I have an excellent man who once served in the Sultan’s Armed Forces.” Spike was on cue. “He speaks passable Arabic and is unmarried. If he is prepared to go, I will need to pay his basic expenses.”

The committee were obviously intrigued by a matter unlike any previous project to have come their way. There was enough of an existing, if questionable, threat to the SAS community to warrant their interest. No police force would be remotely likely to follow up so indeterminate a lead, and the only obvious obstacle was that of funds.

“We have more than enough in the slush fund to cover a return flight and two or three weeks’ basic accommodation,” Jane offered without being asked.

So it was agreed with less bother than Spike had anticipated. Now he had only to locate the best man for the job.

At 9 p.m. on the last day of February, Mason drove the Porsche with studied legality through the streets of East Berlin. He was in uniform. He had dined with a cavalry friend at an
echt Berliner
restaurant with an unpronounceable name. The occasional shabby Trabant loomed up in the gloom, and the white faces of the drivers stared at the Porsche with palpable hostility.

Mason passed through Checkpoint Charlie on his ID card, joining Heerstrasse just beyond the Brandenburg Gate. The wide and ramrod-straight Heerstrasse is governed by synchronized traffic lights. If you cruise at a constant thirty miles an hour you can travel its entire length without having to stop. Mason had quickly cottoned on to the principle that sixty miles an hour was a simple mathematical progression. When that speed had succeeded without a hitch, he wagered and won fifty pounds from brother officers by covering the same distance at 120 mph.

Two minutes’ drive to the north of Heerstrasse, Mason arrived at Wavell Barracks, home to a major portion of the British Berlin Garrison which, in March 1977, included a parachute battalion, a battalion of the Welsh Guards and a cavalry squadron. The armored might of the British in Berlin totaled twelve tanks. Their allies, the French and the Americans, were similarly equipped while, ranged against them, were the 12,000 battle tanks
of the Warsaw Pact. The fatalistic attitude of Mason’s CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Guthrie, and most other Allied officers in Berlin was understandable.

Mason was scornful of the neighboring Allied forces, the French to the north with their canteen full of cheap and nasty wine that ate through its plastic bottles after three weeks in storage and, for the most part, thoroughly useless conscript soldiers. He made an exception of their regular officers and NCOs, many of whom had been crack Foreign Legionnaires in their day.

The Americans to the south he briskly summarized as “lots of possessions, lots of money, and enormously fat wives with a nonstop diet of fries and junk food.”

The Porsche growled by the battalion sties where the battalion pig-corporal was feeding his charges on battalion swill. Mason parked outside the officers’ mess and shivered in the raw Berlin chill.

He glanced at his pigeonhole in the foyer of the officers’ mess. Nothing there: nobody loved him. He went upstairs to the anteroom. Even the snooker table was deserted. Guardsman Coleman appeared from nowhere, smart as a laundered penguin, and gave him a gin and tonic without being asked.

“Message for you, Captain Mason, sir. About an hour ago. Please contact your uncle in London.”

Mason’s only “uncle” never went to London. He sighed but experienced the familiar prickle of anticipation that went with a call from Spike Allen. He picked up a copy of the
Times
, determined to enjoy his drink for five minutes.

His moment of peace was interrupted by two tiresome second lieutenants who flung themselves into neighboring chairs.

“Nearly made it with Angela last night,” one said in an undertone, preening himself in an especially nauseous way that Mason detested.

“Bad luck actually,” the subaltern continued. “Just as the adorable Angie was stretching out those quite wonderfully long, brown legs, one of those bloody wild boars from the Grünewald executed a raid on the Everleys’ dustbins directly below her room.”

The Everleys were a married couple from one of the resident units whose nanny from Kent was then the rage of most unmarried officers in Wavell Barracks. Quite how the hugely unimpressive subaltern had attracted the girl was a mystery to Mason. The last time the garrison had been called out at night for a “Rocking Horse” (the NATO code name for a rehearsal response to a Soviet attack), Angela’s current lover had failed to appear and was accordingly confined to barracks for three months.

Mason’s bête noire continued his lament. “The Everley children woke up and screamed at the crashing bins. Angela froze on me. She quite dried up. Those damned pigs ought to be shot.”

Mason grunted, mentally congratulating the dustbin-loving pigs, and left the room to book a call from the phone booth beside the anteroom. Because of the late hour, he was put through almost at once. Spike explained the background to the Muscat mission. Mason was obviously suited for the job. Spike had provisionally reserved him a seat on the 10 a.m. flight from Heathrow on March 5. Could he make it?

“Your timing is as lousy as ever.” Mason cursed his luck. He was due to start his annual leave on March 4. He and another officer would be skiing in Italy for a fortnight. There was no way, he knew, that he could hand over his Berlin duties until midnight on March 4. On the other hand he tried never to let Spike down. He made up his mind.

“I will check out the timings, Spike, and phone you back in an hour or two.”

Mason made a number of calls and his mood began
to improve. His second conversation with Spike was a reverse-charge call placed from a booth outside the barracks. The anteroom phone was anything but confidential.

“By absconding on my leave some seven hours earlier than permitted,” Mason spoke with some relish, “by bribing a Royal Military Police NCO and by driving extremely fast during the night of March 4, I will just about be able to make the flight. My skiing friend, if asked at some later stage, will insist that I was indeed in Italy with him drinking Glühwein and scorching the black runs. He assumes, I imagine, I’m going to have two dirty weeks with some married woman.” Mason inserted a hardness into his tone. “So I’m all set providing that you, Spike, will bend some of your normal rules.”

Spike responded with a sigh. “If you are thinking of taking any items with you, as per Cyprus, forget it.”

“No item, no Muscat, I’m afraid, Spike. I have great respect for your maxim in the UK but I have risked life and limb for two long years in Oman and the reason I am alive today is
my
maxim of self-preservation.”

Spike never wasted time in pointless repartee. “I have told you to travel legally. If you have other intentions, I know nothing about them.”

“Good,” said Mason. “The other matter is my expenses. Travel, accommodation, two thousand Deutschmarks for a gift to my RMP friend, and all incidental expenses.”

“No problem,” said Spike. “I will use your second passport to process your No Objection Certificate through Kendall’s and have it ready for you at Heathrow along with a photograph of the Welshman.”

Mason placed a further reverse-charge call to a close friend, Patrick Tanner, at his London flat. He apologized for the late hour but he urgently needed Patrick’s help
along much the same lines as the previous year and involving more or less the same equipment. After some good-natured banter, Tanner copied down a complex shopping list. Most of the gear was to be had from Mason’s own safe room on his parents’ Oxfordshire estate. Mason’s father was a touch old-fashioned and did not take kindly to strange civilian friends of his son turning up to stay overnight unless, of course, David was with them at the time. On the other hand he was immensely proud of his son’s service record and any brother Guards officer was always welcome. For this reason, the previous year David had ensured a friendly welcome for Patrick Tanner by having him stand in for an actual Guards officer named Douglas Erskine-Crum, whom his father had heard of but never met. Tanner agreed that he would again present himself as Erskine-Crum, and Mason called his parents to warn them of his arrival the following evening. He would be needing a bed but no breakfast, as he must leave in the small hours for Scotland.

Patrick Tanner’s alarm sounded at 4 a.m. He left a thank-you note to the Masons on his bedside table and descended to the study for the safe-room key. David had told him exactly where to find it. Quietly, lest David’s father should be a poor sleeper, he unlocked the heavy safe-room door, disabled the inner alarms and, with admiration and a touch of envy, surveyed the guns that lined the walls. He was thankful for the checklist David had given him the previous year. On that occasion he had retrieved the Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver.

There were a number of shotguns—.410s, 20-bore and 16-bore—but the prize items were a pair of 12-bore Purdeys with thirty-inch barrels and made in the 1920s, the best period for English game guns.

Patrick smiled as he read through the checklist. David was a connoisseur. The list was almost a homily:

Patrick folded away Mason’s note, unclipped the .22 Hornet from its rack and removed sufficient materials
and tools to make up ten rounds of .22 ammunition from a box in the drawer immediately below. He selected a hardened-plastic rifle case from the relevant rack and spent the better part of an hour centralizing the smaller items on David’s ancillaries list. Finally he removed a battered brown suitcase containing clothing. Not all the gear Mason had requested was in evidence but Patrick had put together a shopping list to attend to later in the day. He replaced the keys, let himself out of the house and drove his VW camper as quietly as the gravel allowed down the driveway of Eynsham Park.

At 5 p.m. on March 4, having handed over his duties as early as was feasible, David Mason left Wavell Barracks in a hurry. He was technically seven hours AWOL since his two weeks’ leave did not officially begin until midnight. Fifteen minutes later he arrived at Checkpoint Bravo, entry point to the Berlin Corridor, and frowned with irritation at the line of cars awaiting document checks. He jumped the queue and flashed his ID card at a queuing burgermeister type who showed signs of indignation. The RMP duty warrant officer was immediately on hand and Mason passed him the two-thousand-Deutschmark traveler’s check to which he had previously agreed in return for keeping a space for 4:30 p.m. for Mason’s green Porsche 911, British Forces Germany registration number EZ 242 B. The warrant officer took details of Mason’s BFG license, his ID, and Green Card insurance cover. The Berlin Corridor system was rigidly controlled to ensure that no driver had time to spare, after leaving the checkpoint at either end of the corridor, to leave the road for nefarious purposes, such as smuggling locals to the West.