Stealth (22 page)

‘Then we'll thank you too and leave.' Patrick got to his feet.

‘He said he was having a few days off and enjoying a walk in the country – Virginia Water. But that's here in London, isn't it? Got his wires crossed. Hope he goes down for a good stretch.'

I wondered if being manipulated by another good actor would cost White his marriage and then realized that I did not care: one bit. But at least he had handed us the man on a plate.

This not being a James Bond movie we had no intention of going after the Russian ourselves, present weakness apart we were also aware that it was unlikely he would be alone but have a couple of minders, possibly armed, in attendance. Not only that, Virginia Water, a large lake situated in parkland and gardens in a corner of Windsor Great Park that was a playground for the Royal Court during the early nineteenth century, is now a very public place. Patrick passed on the information we had been given to the relevant parties together with a reminder of the registration number of Thomas's silver Mercedes which he had made a note of from the man's file.

I did not envy whoever would be in charge of endeavouring to apprehend him. Patrick thought the right tactic would be to carefully shadow him on foot while he was in such a public place and then follow him in unmarked cars when he departed before setting up roads blocks some distance away. This would also be difficult due to the constant heavy traffic.

‘Good, no obvious cops,' Patrick said, having paid off the taxi that had taken a frustratingly long time to get hold of. We had asked to be put down near the entrance to the main car park and from where I was standing it looked quite full. Without needing to confer we entered and strolled along the rows of cars – content to walk slowly and also not wishing to draw attention to ourselves – looking out for Thomas's Mercedes. This being a wealthy district every other car seemed to be either that or a Range Rover, Porsche or BMW, so I stopped looking at badges and concentrated on registration plates.

Ten minutes later when we had not found it I said, ‘Perhaps Thomas didn't tell White the truth.'

‘That has to be factored in,' Patrick agreed.

‘From childhood memories I have an idea there's a road that people park in partly to avoid paying here.'

‘Where the really rich leave their cars?' Patrick wondered.

‘Especially the really rich. It's near one of the lodges on another entrance.'

‘How far around the lake?'

‘I can't remember exactly – I was only eight years old. At least a couple of miles away.'

‘Bloody hell,' he muttered. ‘Can you walk two miles?'

‘No. How about getting an update before we decide what to do, if anything?'

Patrick paused in finding his mobile, gazing into the distance. ‘Those two vehicles parked over there not in proper spaces . . . unmarked police cars unless I'm losing it.'

No one was in the cars. Patrick rang for the latest information and all the Met could tell him was that a low-key search was being carried out by plain-clothes personnel but neither Thomas nor his car had yet been located. Patrick mentioned the road, Blacknest Road as it turned out, where the vehicle might be but that was one of the first places that had been reconnoitred. At present there were five teams of three commencing to walk the lakeside paths in different directions and if that drew a blank then the search would be extended into Windsor Great Park itself.

‘There's an armed response group on standby and mounted cops arriving very shortly in the park,' Patrick finished by saying. ‘Perhaps they ought to give the horses to the blokes with guns.'

‘We're a bit superfluous,' I observed. ‘The park's absolutely vast, around a thousand acres.'

We carried on with our trawl through the car park, just in case, but did not find the vehicle.

‘OK,' Patrick said, coming to a halt. ‘We out-think this mobster. As you pointed out he could have been lying to White but had no reason to unless he suspected him of selling him down the river. White could have been lying to us but I don't think so. So, Thomas goes for a walk, jog, whatever but always being wary of the law, especially now after what they did to us, he does not leave his car in an obvious place. Perhaps, when possible, he never leaves it in obvious places. What time is it?'

‘Eleven fifty.'

‘I'm wondering if he's parked where he's planned to have lunch. Where's the nearest pub?'

‘Practically next door. But that's still quite an obvious place.'

The silver car was not obvious at all as it had been left in a far corner of the pub car park partly screened by overgrown shrubs and beneath a huge weeping willow tree, some of the trailing branches of which had been draped over the vehicle. We observed it from the middle distance, Patrick reported the find and then we left, hoping that if Thomas and any henchmen were inside the building they had not seen us.

‘No, you're right,' Patrick said. ‘We're superfluous and if they're in the pub simply can't risk being spotted and flushing them out before the cavalry arrive. D'you want lunch – somewhere else?'

‘I wouldn't mind ten minutes fresh air by the lake,' I replied. To sit on a seat with the sun on my face and think of happy things: the garden at home, the children, the kittens, a few day's leave with the man I love . . .

As the full car park had indicated there were plenty of people around: women pushing buggies, cyclists, joggers, very smart dogs being exercised by exceedingly smart people. We turned right and headed along the shore where it did not seem to be so crowded and then sat on a bench for a while. I found it impossible to relax so suggested carrying on for a short distance. It is an idyllic place, the sun sparkling on the lake, waterfowl dipping and diving, fresh new leaves on the trees.

‘As a child I was taken to some ruins here,' I recollected. ‘My father was really keen on seeing them – I think he said they came from North Africa.'

‘All by themselves?' Patrick queried. I was sure he had not closed his eyes for a second either.

‘No, silly. Someone gave them to the then King as a present.'

‘That sounds like George the Fourth. He was really in to follies and grand pavilions. Where are they?'

‘Sorry, I really can't remember after all this time.'

‘Never mind, let's just walk a little farther along here and then go and find something to eat.'

‘Will we do things like this when we're old and retired?' I mused aloud after a few minutes of mutual reflective silence. ‘Feeling as we do now: battered, worn out, with aches and pains, having to have little rests now and again?'

‘God, if I don't feel a damn sight better than this when I'm old and retired I'll go out and bloody shoot myself – that's if I live that long,' was the heated riposte.

I took his hand.

For some reason – the serenity of our surroundings must have worked its magic on us – we carried on walking and I felt the tension beginning to seep out of me. Some time later, not very long afterwards, we arrived at England's small share of the ruins of Leptis Magna.

I
noticed the pedimented columns in the distance before my partner did. His attention was firmly on a group of three men rapidly approaching us along the sandy path. They were casually dressed: jeans, leather jackets, trainers, one wearing a baseball cap, the uniform of non-uniform police and at a fast walk, two staring about gimlet-eyed, the third, binoculars around his neck, talking grimly into his mobile phone. The little army crunched by.

‘Any sign of him?' Patrick called to their retreating backs.

They came to an abrupt halt and turned to face us and for a moment there was silence but for the hoots of waterbirds and the faint drone of a Heathrow-bound airliner.

‘SOCA,' Patrick went on to say, walking closer, speaking more quietly.

‘No,' one of them answered.

‘You're looking for a bloke out for a walk or jog but at that rate you'll be after someone hiding under bushes. For God's sake, don't look like cops.'

They stared at him for a moment longer and then one jerked his head and they marched off again.

We both sighed.

‘OK, keep out of it,' Patrick muttered. ‘Mind my own effin' business. Yes, ruins – fascinating.'

He came off the boil as we got closer and began to read the explanatory notices.

‘It's fairly recently been restored as much as possible to the ruinous state that was first created when it was re-erected here at the beginning of the nineteenth century as a temple in the King's pleasure gardens,' I said, being annoying by reading a different one to Patrick. ‘Vegetation had grown over it and vandals severely damaged everything by pulling over some of the walls and pillars.'

‘I'm thinking of the work involved in bringing something like this from Libya to Surrey in those days.'

We wandered along the central path between low railings with spikes, blunt, on top, on either side that now prevented public access – no doubt intended as a deterrent to modern vandals – and again I paused, half shutting my eyes and trying to picture these shattered remnants as they had been in their days of glory. But for once my writer's imagination failed me and all I could see was the reality: elegant stonework in a woodland glade with neatly mown grass round and about it. The harsh cry of a jay as it flew from an oak banished for ever any imaginary pictures of hot African sunshine and I walked on.

Gates in the railings permitted access for gardeners and other maintenance personnel and I noticed in passing that the two in view were open – that is, the padlocks that presumably fastened the securing chains were not there. In the fenced-off area over to my left a wheelbarrow containing a few tools was rather incongruously parked where one might have expected an altar to have once stood. Had the police suggested to the park authorities that they withdraw staff as a safety measure and those working here had forgotten to lock up?

‘George the Fourth wasn't able to close the main road then,' I said to myself, following Patrick beneath an old bridge under the A30. Ahead lay more of the ancient Roman city, darker, with taller trees and, despite the traffic thundering above my head, brooding, somehow dangerous. The jay was still nearby, its raucous
kaaa
amplified by the narrow space in which we were standing, and the bird could be glimpsed among the greenery ahead of me. It was watching something, not us. I felt a sudden jolt of alarm.

‘As wary as magpies,' I heard Patrick whisper tautly just as I was about to share my concern. ‘Is anyone around?'

‘I can only see an elderly couple about forty yards away back the way we've just come,' I told him.

‘Please go and stop them coming any closer. Hurry. Stay away until I say otherwise.'

I hurried as well as I was able, told the pair that the gardeners were spraying chemicals and had come without warning notices and managed to usher them away. Then I looked back towards the bridge and could see no sign of Patrick. Despite what he had said I had no intention of staying away, actually feeling very exposed on this open pathway with any number of hiding places among the ruins on almost every side of me.

Hearing footsteps a short distance behind me towards the lake I turned and saw another threesome of police coming from the opposite direction to the others, having to look again to establish that it was indeed different people. It was, the man nearest to the water being rather overweight. Did I hurry over to them and suggest they search the ruins? Was the resulting three-ring circus necessary – if indeed there was a real chance that the man everyone was looking for was there and not a bad case of SOCA heebie-jeebies – with sniffer dogs, police marksmen, and given half a chance, the King's Troupe, when a little stealth might suffice? I thought not.

The miniature cohort of cops slogged off.

There was no point in my going through one of the gates into the relics of the ancient world on this side of the bridge as the embankment carrying the road would block my path and I was convinced Patrick was on the other side of it. Moving as quickly and quietly as possible I went back, keeping well to one side of the arch when I reached it and not yet moving forward so as to be plainly visible from the other side. Inwardly cursing the slight sounds I made I took the Smith and Wesson from my bag, then risked going back a few paces to where I could put the bag over the railings and conceal it behind the base of a broken column.

I could hear the alarm call of a blackbird somewhere ahead of me. During the training that he had added on to that which I received before working for MI5 Patrick always impressed on me the importance of watching and listening to wildlife when hunting in the countryside, whether it be for foe or the cooking pot. And, he had said, time used being still, using all your senses, absorbing what is going on around you is never wasted. The word came back to me again: stealth.

Ahead and over to my right a twig snapped, a biggish twig, smallish branch sort of noise made by a human being or heavy animal treading on it. I recollected the gap in the columns I had seen the first time with a view into a wooded glade beyond and risked a quick peep around the end of the arch.

A man carrying a hand gun of some kind was furtively walking to the rear of a broken-down wall – I could only see the top two-thirds of him – that was at right angles to the embankment, the top of which was screened by the branches of trees. Slowly making his way in the direction of the centre of the glade he looked around nervously as though trying to find out if anyone else was there. I froze as he glanced in my direction but he did not see me and left the wall behind, walking away from me. Then, slightly over to my left, another man emerged from between the end of a row of columns set on a raised dais and a tall group of shrubs, paused for a moment, a matter of five yards between him and the other man, and then swiftly closed the gap and struck him down from behind with a blow to the neck.