Retribution Read online

  Richter nodded. ‘All three of them, obviously. What’s on your mind?’

  ‘The assassination outside the restaurant.’

  ‘That figures. One of your normal watering holes, was it?’

  ‘That’s irrelevant, and you know it. But in fact I have eaten there a few times, yes. Their pheasant is particularly good.’

  Richter nodded again. ‘Some minor African prince got whacked, I gather.’

  ‘Exactly. The hit took place only a short time before the intelligence summary went to press, so details were somewhat sketchy, but we now know a bit more about what happened. It was a clear and deliberate assassination, there’s no doubt about that. The doorman at the restaurant saw what happened. He was inside and kept his head down, but he had a pretty good view of the street through the window, and what he said was supported by the videos from the CCTV cameras that covered the entrance.

  ‘The victim was, as you’ve said, an African prince. By all accounts, he was a thoroughly unpleasant piece of work. One of my colleagues in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office told me that he made Mugabe look almost normal and benevolent by comparison. He flew in on board a customised 747, and until somebody with good taste and a generous supply of nine-millimetre Parabellum bullets decided that enough was enough, he’d spent his time gambling, drinking and whoring his way around the West End. This country and the world in general is undeniably a better place now that he is no longer listed among the living, but the diplomatic shit-storm is likely to be significant. And, not to put too fine a point on it, we – the government and security services of Britain, that is – have been left with egg on our faces because he was under the protection of the DPG.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ Richter said. ‘That wasn’t in the summary. But unless I’ve missed something, he was strictly minor-league. Why was the DPG even involved?’

  The Diplomatic Protection Group is a part of the Specialist Operations (SO) directorate of the Metropolitan Police Service, its shorthand title being SO6, and its officers are most commonly seen providing very obvious armed protection outside important British government buildings like the Palace of Westminster and at the entrance to Downing Street. The uniformed officers are issued with Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine-guns and Glock 17 semi-automatic pistols, as well as the usual equipment carried by police officers, such as handcuffs and batons. Their badge numbers start with a letter ‘D’ prefix, and they drive high performance armed response vehicles invariably coloured bright red, for easy identification by other police officers.

  However, there are numerous situations and tasks where an armed uniformed police officer would clearly be inappropriate, such as protecting the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and other senior government officials as they go about their parliamentary business, and so DPG officers frequently work in plain clothes to provide armed protection for them, as well as for visiting diplomats and others.

  ‘The DPG was involved for the usual reasons,’ Simpson replied. ‘Oil, and in this case gold as well. The British government has been sweet-talking Daddy for the last eighteen months or so, trying to get him to sign significantly one-sided agreements that will allow us to get our hands on his country’s black and yellow gold for the minimum possible price for the longest possible period of time. Daddy, the prince’s father, by the way, is even more unpleasant than his son, not that that alters the price of fish. So now the old Etonians from the FCO are doing their usual impersonations of headless chickens, running around trying to put the best possible spin on what happened. Though quite how they’re going to convince a violently murderous, genocidally-inclined and wholly bigoted dictator that the death of his only son and heir is a good thing is quite another matter. But luckily that’s not our problem.’

  Richter glanced at his watch, very conscious of the pile of documents waiting for him in his office, then looked back at Simpson.

  ‘So what is our problem, exactly?’ he asked. ‘I have got a few things to do. And why are we involved at all? This looks to me like a straightforward job for the woodentops. Let the Met plods earn their pay and sort it out.’

  ‘I’m coming to that. So Prince Nasty had two DPG bodyguards driving him around London in an armoured Jaguar limo, and they basically saw him into and out of everywhere he wanted to go. As far as the FCO was aware, there was no credible threat against the man. He was a world-class shit, obviously, but that isn’t usually enough for somebody to want him dead, because otherwise the Palace of Westminster and most European parliament buildings would be virtually empty. Really, the DPG bodyguards were provided just to make him feel important, and maybe help smooth the way towards getting a signature from Daddy on those contracts.

  ‘That day, he did his usual stuff, getting up just after most people have finished eating lunch, kicking his overnight whores out of bed and then spent the afternoon gambling at a casino up West, losing steadily and getting progressively more drunk and unpleasant, if that were actually possible. Then his car appeared outside the casino promptly at eight, driver and two bodyguards inside, and took him and a couple of hookers to his usual restaurant. And that’s where his holiday in Britain finished.

  ‘There was a staged car crash right outside the restaurant. While the bodyguards were looking at that, and no doubt wondering what they should do about it, two men wearing jeans and jackets and black balaclavas stepped out of the entrance to the building next door and lit up the prince with a couple of suppressed nine-millimetre Mac-10s.’

  The Military Armament Corporation Model 10 was developed in the 1960s by an inventor named Gordon Ingram, who also designed a submachine-gun – the Ingram Model 6 – that bears his name. The Mac-10 is cheap, ugly and small, though less so if the optional screw-on suppressor is fixed to the end of the barrel, and wildly inaccurate, one expert describing it as ‘fit only for combat in a phone booth’. But because it fires from an open bolt, and that bolt is comparatively light, its rate of fire is simply astonishing – 1,250 rounds a minute for the nine-millimetre version – making it capable of emptying its entire 32-round magazine in just over one and a half seconds. The suppressor adds another dimension to the weapon, because with it fitted the machine-pistol is virtually silent in operation, and certainly quieter than almost any other suppressed weapon.

  ‘Not the best assassination weapon in the world,’ Richter said. ‘It’s so inaccurate that you can pretty much fire it inside a barn and still manage to miss the roof and walls. It’s one of the weapons of choice for gang bangers because they think it looks cool, it’s like a hosepipe on full auto and they don’t know any better. So who were the killers? A couple of people from back home that Daddy had pissed off?’

  ‘I’m coming to that. And I agree about the choice of weapon, but at the range they were shooting it didn’t make the slightest difference. The assassins got within about ten feet of the target before they opened up.’

  Richter raised his hand and interrupted.

  ‘A question before I forget. How do you know the car crash was staged? That it wasn’t a genuine accident?’

  ‘Balance of probability,’ Simpson said. ‘The car was a Vauxhall on stolen plates, and it had been modified for the job. There was extra padding on the steering wheel, and the standard lap and diagonal belt had been replaced by a full racing harness. The person driving definitely knew that he was going to crash it, and the CCTV confirms it. The images show the driver getting out of the car wearing heavy padding across his chest and a neck brace, and simply legging it as soon as the shooting started. Unless you’re looking at the wildest possible coincidence, and it was some dickhead who drives around the country actually expecting to have a crash, it was a deliberate set-up.’

  ‘I don’t believe in coincidence any more than you do,’ Richter said. ‘According to the overnight report, there were four people confirmed dead at the scene. Presumably that was the prince himself, the hooker who’d won that night’s star prize, and the two DPG guys.’

  ‘That’s what I
thought when I saw the report,’ Simpson agreed, ‘but we were both wrong. Two of the dead were call girls, and only one of the DPG bodyguards was killed. As far as we know, anyway.’

  ‘You need to explain that,’ Richter said.

  ‘That’s where it all starts getting a bit murky. There was a lot of confusion, and bullets flying everywhere, but the CCTV clearly shows that there were three attackers, not two. The two assassins with the Mac-10s stood side-by-side and aimed straight at the prince and the leading bodyguard, and they took down the hookers as well as a bit of collateral damage. But there was a third man, and he explicitly targeted the second DPG bodyguard. He wasn’t using a machine pistol, just what looked like a kind of oversized handgun, and he fired one shot at the second man. He fell flat on the ground, on his back, and dropped his weapon, and on the CCTV it looks like he’s just as dead as the other four people.’

  ‘You mean he was just wounded?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. The whole area is of course a crime scene with Met plod Scene of Crime Officers or Forensic Scene Investigators or whatever they’re calling themselves this week poring all over it, but unless they’ve missed it, no blood was found where he fell. Of course, if he’d taken a shot to the chest that had hit his heart, there wouldn’t have been much blood anyway. The Transit van that had stopped beside the Jaguar was obviously a part of the set-up as well because of what happened next. The third man, the one who’d just shot the second bodyguard, ran over to the Transit, opened up both the back doors and then climbed into the passenger seat. And then the really strange element to all this is that once the guys with the machine-pistols had finished their part of the work, they ran over, picked up the second DPG bodyguard, and moved out of shot. But we know what happened because of the statements made by the two witnesses.’

  ‘Witnesses? What two witnesses? You said witness before. Singular.’

  ‘I told you about the doorman at the restaurant, and the driver of the Jaguar was the second one. They both saw everything, although from different angles. The doorman was just hiding behind a wooden door, but as soon as the shooting started the limo driver pulled the open door closed and locked everything. He was unarmed so he couldn’t do anything to help, and he couldn’t drive away because he had an unwanted Vauxhall hood ornament in front of him that he couldn’t shift. But he knew that as long as the bad guys hadn’t got an RPG-7 or a pocketful of Semtex or C4, he was fireproof and safe inside the armoured Jag. So that’s where he stayed, watching the action. Anyway, as soon as they ran out of bullets, the killers picked up the bodyguard and carried him over to the van. They put him in the back, jumped in themselves and then the van was driven away.’

  Richter didn’t say anything for almost a minute, his brain processing what Simpson had told him.

  ‘That doesn’t make any kind of sense,’ he said at last. ‘In fact, nothing much makes sense, right from minute one. The killing of the prince seems to come out of the blue, with no prior threats, unless you know something that I don’t about that?’

  Simpson shook his head.

  ‘I’ve talked to my opposite numbers at the FCO, The Box, Legoland and the Doughnut, and nobody’s claiming to have heard anything.’

  Richter nodded. Although there were still occasional glitches and turf wars, most of the time the Foreign and Colonial Office, MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service were more or less in step with each other. MI5 was known within the intelligence community as The Box, a reference to its original postal address, PO Box 500 in London. Oddly enough, its postal address is still a box number, but now it’s PO Box 3255, which is rather more difficult to remember. The SIS, located at Vauxhall Cross, is popularly and erroneously known to both the press and the public as MI6, but is more accurately referred to by intelligence professionals as Legoland, a nickname many people think is entirely justified, not least because of the shape of the building it occupies beside the Thames. And in most of its operations it was more Blackadder and Johnny English than James Bond. The Doughnut was the inevitable nickname acquired by GCHQ – Government Communications Headquarters – a nicely innocuous name for Britain’s principal electronic spying operation out at Cheltenham, the new building of which looks remarkably like a massive metal ring doughnut when seen from the air.

  But if there had been a threat, a specific threat against the life of the prince, it was inconceivable that none of these four organisations would have picked up something about it.

  ‘So what the hell are we looking at here?’ Richter asked. ‘Did the killers target the wrong man? Was it a case of mistaken identity? Or was the killing ordered by some organisation back in Africa, and they just contracted out the job to some local team here in London? I mean, this looks almost like a professional hit – the staged car crash, the timing and everything – but carried out by a bunch of amateurs, at least because of the weapons they used. And that really doesn’t make sense. But the big question, at least in my mind, is what happened to the second DPG guy.’

  ‘That is the crux of it,’ Simpson agreed. ‘Is he alive or is he dead? And, just as important, was he doing his job, or was he a part of the hit, and when he was supposedly shot, was that all just a piece of play-acting?’

  He paused briefly, looked down at the pink Secret file open on the desk in front of him, and then back at Richter.

  ‘And that’s where you come in,’ he said.

  Chapter 2

  ‘I’m used to sorting out other peoples’ messes, but why exactly, have I been chosen as the SLJO for this one?’

  ‘Don’t spout acronyms at me, Richter,’ Simpson said. ‘Spit it out in English.’

  ‘“Shitty Little Jobs Officer”, obviously. So why me?’

  ‘You’re in the loop because you know the second DPG bodyguard.’

  ‘I do? Who is he?’

  ‘Jacob Alan King.’

  Richter was silent for a second, then nodded.

  ‘That’s Jacko,’ he said. ‘He was in the Regiment, and he’s one of Colin Decker’s buddies up in Hereford. I met him through Colin when I was doing training and stuff with the SAS. I didn’t know you knew I’d even met him. He wasn’t in any of my contact reports, as far as I can remember, because he was just a nodding acquaintance, not a friend.’

  ‘As I’ve told you before, Richter, I know almost everything, almost all of the time. So you do remember him?’

  ‘Yes. Big bloke, bigger than most of them in the SAS. They tend to be more like average height and weight. More my kind of build. Very fit, obviously. So what was he doing working for the DPG? I thought he was still in the Regiment.’

  ‘He is,’ Simpson said. ‘There are a bunch of dignitaries prowling about the Smoke at the moment, and the DPG is a tad short of manpower as a result, so a few volunteers were seconded from the Regiment, just to make up numbers. King was one of them.’

  ‘So what am I supposed to do about this?’

  Simpson stared at him.

  ‘I’d have thought that was obvious. Go out and find King. If he was a hostage to these Mac-10-toting comedians, bring him back in as few pieces as you can manage. If it turns out he was working with them, don’t bother bringing him back at all. Just get rid of him.’

  Richter nodded. ‘Apart from what you’ve just told me, any leads?’

  ‘Nothing particularly useful. The car was stolen in Bedford about a week ago, and the plates were lifted from a motor in a car park at Staples Corner three days after that. The cameras didn’t get a clear image of the Transit van because it was side-on to the restaurant and nobody made a note of it. We have a partial that suggests the number had 07 in it, but it’d be a pretty good guess that it was grabbed over the last few days, and was probably also on stolen plates. That’s about it.’

  ‘Typical. All assistance short of actual help.’

  ‘Not my fault, Richter. If and when the woodentops or the DPG find out anything else, I promise you’ll be the first to know about it. But you’re good at ferreting out things, so make l
ike a ferret and find out what’s going on here.’

  Richter nodded, stood up and turned to leave the room.

  Simpson called out and stopped him halfway to the door. ‘One more thing,’ he said. ‘Before you leave the building, get yourself down to the armoury and draw a personal weapon. We don’t know who these people are, but we do know that they are armed and quite prepared to kill. So it’s a good idea if you can shoot back. Just try not to kill anybody who isn’t a part of the gang.’

  ‘An MP5?’ Richter asked hopefully.

  ‘Certainly not. You’re trying to track down a bunch of terrorists, not start guerrilla warfare on the streets of London. I’ve authorised you to draw an automatic pistol. You’re checked out on the Browning Hi-Power, so that’s what you’ll get, along with one box of fifty rounds of nine-millimetre ammunition and a spare magazine. If you need more than that, you’re in trouble. The case file, what there is of it, should be on your desk by now.’

  It was. In a pink file cover to indicate its Secret classification, the file lay by itself between Richter’s in-tray, which as usual contained a tottering heap of documents, and his empty out-tray.

  ‘Thanks, George,’ Richter said, signing the classified document register to acknowledge receipt of the file and handing it back to the courier, who had been patiently waiting for his return from Simpson’s office.

  There was very little in it. The written information consisted of a narrative account of the events of the previous evening, as far as had been known at the time the text had been written, supported by a number of later notes and clarifications as more snippets of information had become available. But even with all these addenda, there was very little more data than Simpson had already provided to him.