Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men) Read online

  Spike looked around. As he later commented to Macpherson, “You could hear a flea fart, they were so attentive.” Bletchley had begun to sweat profusely and his shoulder moved with a furtive tic as though some manikin was trying to burst out of his collarbone.

  “A year later,” Spike continued, “one of Bob Mantell’s sources in the Worcester police gave us another lead to the same suspect. This time our Locals identified the correct target but their watch was called off when, after a three-week period, the suspect appeared to have been frightened off by one of them. Sadly this second target, an SAS officer, was killed and no additional information was obtained about the assassins.”

  “A pretty abysmal record by all counts,” muttered Mike Panny.

  Spike ignored him and continued. “A great deal of water has passed under the bridge since then, but yesterday a veteran Local recognized the same suspect who was implicated in both previous murders, at the house of a Major Michael Marman in Clapham. The suspect posed as a policeman and was accompanied by a second colleague whom our man also recognized from the 1977 Milling affair. The reason for their visit to Marman’s home seems to have been familiarization with his house and circumstances.”

  “What has Marman to do with the two previous targets?” Mantell asked.

  “That is not the point,” Bletchley burst out. White in the face and shaking as though from St. Vitus’s Dance, he hammered his fist on his papers. “The question should be: ‘What has any of this to do with us?’ ” For a minute or more, words seemed to fail him. He leaned forward, jerking at the neck, and Jane placed her hands anxiously around him. His eyes stood out and he stared at her, gulping as though for air. Believing Bletchley was having a stroke, Macpherson was about to suggest an immediate journey to the hospital when Bletchley recovered both his voice and his composure.

  “Before I make further comment,” he said to Spike, “have you finished your report?”

  Spike shook his head. “I believe the suspects intend to kill Major Marman. He served in Dhofar with the Sultan’s Armed Forces, as did the other two officers. The motive may lie in some knowledge possessed by all three targets. It may even have to do with revenge or blackmail. I ask that the committee sanction an immediate and close watch over Marman until such time as we have enough evidence of intent to murder or I am proved to be wrong.” Spike sat back and several people spoke at once.

  As Bletchley was again gripped by a palsied shuddering, Bob Mantell became his mouthpiece.

  “As the chairman noted and I repeat, ‘This has nothing to do with us.’ May I remind you all that my friends at the Yard looked very closely at the Kealy case. They found absolutely no evidence of foul play and the South Powys police have closed the matter for good. I must remind you further that a majority of this committee agreed at that time to have nothing further to do with the Dhofar Connection, as the don insisted on calling the two killings.”

  Mantell paused, shifting his gammy hip before continuing on a new tack. “I also have to ask you … does this Marman have any link with our flock? Should we feel motivated in any way to protect him? What I am querying is: did he or did he not serve with an SAS unit?”

  “Negative,” said Spike, “but he is our only link with the men who killed Kealy, and therefore our only chance of obtaining justice for the killing of an SAS officer.”

  “With due respect to our Regular brethren,” Mantell countered, “we exist to look after living individuals with SAS histories and their families. The pursuit of justice for Kealy’s killers, though laudable, is not our concern. The Marman case is outside our terms of reference and purely a matter for the police.”

  “We have been through all this before.” Macpherson’s voice was low and controlled, but Spike, who knew him better than the others did, could see that he was angry. “Since Mantell has engaged in repeating the rationale for inaction, let me remind old members, and suggest to our newer colleagues, that the police simply cannot act upon vague threats, with no known motivation, to non-VIP members of the public and by unidentified persons. Therefore, if we have good reason to believe Major Marman’s life is in danger, we should help him. No one else will. Major Kealy was a very brave SAS officer and I do believe we should extend our activities to putting his killers where they belong, should they again fall into our laps.”

  “ ’Ere, ’ere,” shouted Graves, who had become very hard of hearing. “We can’t just let these greasy buggers slip through our ’ands.”

  “May I speak, Mr. Chairman?” The more pallid and elongated of the two gray men looked up from behind rimless half spectacles and Bletchley mouthed an affirmative.

  “The police commissioner, Sir Kenneth Newman, only last month gave official warning that he had instigated new moves to clamp down on what he called ‘private security organizations operating at the very frontiers of official tolerance.’ ”

  “He was talking about the registered groups, not us,” Macpherson interrupted. “Our existence remains unknown to the commissioner.”

  “Yes, but the burgeoning of semiclandestine security outfits is causing growing alarm to Special Branch. Blue-chip companies have begun to hire high-tech spies from these firms to check up on each other inside the UK. As the Cold War recedes, unethical home-based organizations will find themselves more and more under the official searchlight. Signs of this have already begun. The Home Office last year authorized significantly fewer phone taps and mail intercepts against left-wing subversive suspects and a correspondingly greater number against certain domestic elements worrisome to Special Branch.”

  Mike Panny decided not to be outdone in the field of in-depth know-how. “I agree. These security mobs are now so numerous and their activities so questionable that a clampdown is inevitable. In London alone we now have the KMS ‘Keeny-Meenies,’ Alistair Morrison’s Defense Systems, Control Risks, Winguard, DSI, Saladin, Lawnwest, Cornhill Mangement, SCI, Paladin, Argen, Delta, and of course the grandmother of them all, active since 1967, Watchguard.” He waved an admonitory finger around the table. “Mark my words, although many of them take care to stay legit, not all can effectively leash their hounds. Scandals will result.”

  Macpherson had recognized a growing tendency in some of the longer-serving committee members to fight shy of any course of action that might conceivably backfire on their personal reputations. This applied especially to Bletchley. Like Macpherson, he had become a senior player in the City with a string of prestigious nonexecutive directorships, various high-profile charity presidencies and, until he was recently curtailed by his strange indisposition, rode an exacting social merry-go-round with the highest in the land. It was apparent to Macpherson that Panny, the don, and Mantell were suffering on a lower plane from the same aversion to the sanctioning of any course of action by the Feather Men that carried a risk of publicity that might compromise their untarnished reputations. All had much to lose and little to gain, a very different situation from what had existed at the time of their induction to the committee all those years ago.

  Only Spike, August and Jane remained largely unaltered by the passage of time, by changing circumstances and fashions, Macpherson thought. Maybe it was time for a spring cleaning. Even as the idea crossed his mind, it was discounted. The founder, a man of intense loyalty to old friends, would never sanction it. The founder was himself none too well these days, and Macpherson would not willingly approach him with contentious points unless there was no alternative.

  The matter of Marman was thrashed out and put to the vote with an inconclusive result.

  “On a decision which involves life or death, I exercise my right to request that we reconvene with the full committee tomorrow.” Macpherson made his move as soon as the tie vote was announced. He had been expecting it and had reluctantly made up his mind to bring out his only trump card.

  The absent founder’s casting vote in favor of the Marman watch was implemented at the next meeting, a perfectly correct procedure, and the word went out immediately to John
Smythe and five other Locals in the Southeast. Spike was taking no chances this time.

  32

  Meier’s technical brilliance was an undeniable money-earner for the Clinic. The agencies they used were aware, for instance, that he had designed a sleeper bomb of the type used to attack the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton in 1984. This he could preset to go off a year after he had planted it. With quartz chronometers, standard VCRs and long-delay batteries linked in tandem, he could place the bomb kit during the dismantlement by contractors of the grandstand of some annual royal event. Without any further action, he could be certain that the explosion would detonate a year later to within a minute of a preset time and date.

  In Boston in 1974, Meier had spent three months planning a staged road accident by an ingenious “third-party” method that became known within the Clinic as the “Boston brakes” and which, after rehearsals had honed it to perfection, was aborted, much to Meier’s frustration. Now that he had the chance to resurrect the system, he was full of the joys of life.

  “This is Jake, who has worked with Tadnams for four years. Though I say so myself, he is a genius with cars. He designs transmissions and is not put off by unethical improvisation. He is at home with what you”—Meier looked at de Villiers—“would describe as the Rube Goldberg factor, and our Welsh colleague might scornfully call Heath Robinson.”

  Jake, a weedy fellow with etiolated complexion and bad teeth, played with his hands, twining the long and surprisingly powerful-looking fingers about one another as though embarrassed by praise from a maestro.

  “Glad to have you with us,” said de Villiers. Then, changing the topic, “The video is fine. After some hours in the dubbing studio, we have it so the sheikh will suspect nothing. The film shows me accusing Marman of the killing at Zakhir and he denies it hotly. It looks real good. All we need now is to nail this guy in such a way that there is a 100 percent absence of suspicious circumstances.”

  “Two hundred percent,” Meier retorted. “Let me take you step by step.”

  “You normally do,” Davies said, slumping back in his chair with an exaggerated sigh.

  Outside in Trebovir Road the street resounded to gunfire and Meier looked up, startled. Davies chuckled at his discomfiture. “Ever heard of Guy Fawkes? You should have … he was your alter ego but for the one-year fuse delay.”

  “Mercedes,” Meier recited, “has a training workshop in Untertürkheim which, since 1916, has turned out apprentices that later advanced the world of engineering in many amazing ways. Jake here received three years’ training there and later achieved the diploma of master mechanic from the West German Chamber of Handicraft. He has studied my Boston system and is impressed. We will be working together until completion.”

  Meier moved to the central table, on which he had laid out a road map of southern England. “First,” he said. “We have Davies’s report on the target. The man is macho cojones, a real swordsman or, as Davies puts it, very free with his whatsit. In practice this means he enjoys female company and is seldom alone. We are all agreed that the best scenario, to catch him alone, is out on the road.”

  Jake put in his oar, his voice as cadaverous as his face. “We are lucky this man has a Citroën 2CV. Very feeble machine. Cracks easy like an eggshell. The driver has no untershied, no protection.”

  Meier nodded at his acolyte. “This is correct, quite so, but to continue, having established that the action will be on the road, we ask ourselves: why no bomb? Why no sabotage? Why not make the brakes fail and hope for a fatal result?” He paused. “Because with all such events the police conduct an immediate forensic study and even I could not get away with a No Foul Play verdict.”

  Davies coughed. “Get on with it.”

  “Again, if we should have a Tadnams heavy in a reinforced car ram into the 2CV or drive Marman off the road, it will be obvious foul play. So what can we do? Of course, we need a random third party to collide head-on with his car at more than thirty miles an hour. This will certainly be fatal to Marman and the police will never even contemplate premeditation.” Meier beamed. “The Boston brakes will achieve all this for us.”

  Davies cut in. “In principle maybe, but I don’t see your third-party random drivers rushing in to volunteer their services as guided missiles.”

  Meier ignored him. “The theory is very simple. We find someone who we know will drive on the same road at the same time as Marman but in the opposite direction. I follow behind this chosen and doctored car with Jake driving me. You follow behind the 2CV and we keep in radio contact so that I know exactly when and where the cars will approach each other. Depending on the aggregate speeds, but at a likely distance of five hundred yards prior to the projected passing point, I take radio control of the random car and steer it to a head-on collision with Marman.”

  “What if they happen to meet in a traffic jam, or at a roundabout, or on opposite sides of a steel crash barrier?” It was Davies again.

  “Of course, that is possible. But with a country road like the A303, the odds against not meeting on the open road and at high speeds are greater than nine-to-one.”

  “But still possible?” Davies persisted.

  “Yes, and that is why our device will be detachable. We know from the diary that we have two other chances. Jake and I would simply transfer the device to another proxy car in readiness for another known Marman journey.”

  “Okay, okay.” De Villiers was unconvinced. “But how the hell do you select a suitable proxy?”

  “This we have already done.” Meier’s voice was sugary and conspiratorial. “Come, look at the map here.” He indicated the region between London and the south coast. Two red chinagraph marks indicated Marman’s Clapham house and the Wiltshire village of Steeple Langford.

  “The target will lunch at the village here, departing at 3:15 p.m. in order to return to Clapham in time to make job-hunting phone calls. Then he goes round to his girlfriend, Julia, in Brook Green. We give him an average speed on a clear dual highway of fifty-five miles per hour and a simple mathematical process tells us he will at 3:45 p.m.—even allowing fifteen minutes and ten miles per hour overall differences to the planned parameters—be somewhere between Winterbourne Stoke and Popham on the A303, a stretch of over thirty miles of fast road. All we need now is to find a driver who is scheduled to be heading west in the opposite direction, along that same twenty-mile stretch at 3:45 p.m.”

  “That,” said Davies, “is where you come unstuck.”

  “Not at all,” Meier responded. “Look at the map here and you can clearly see that the A303 is a main arterial road between London and such towns as Exeter and Plymouth. What sort of person needs to drive that route frequently? A representative of a company with offices in both places. Naturally the city of Plymouth brought to my mind the hovercraft we used to such good effect last summer. That was a Slingsby SAH2200 model originating from a manufacturing group named ML Holdings with a subsidiary based in Plymouth. Tadnams quickly rustled up, from an acquisitions research company, the necessary background data on ML, Shorts of Belfast, and five other firms with London and Plymouth units.”

  De Villiers was nodding quietly, with growing enthusiasm.

  “What clinched the selection process was that ML Holdings are due to hold a Main Board meeting in Plymouth on the morning of November twelfth. Any London-based directors will need to be in Plymouth the preceding night, which, if they are to dine on expenses at a good Plymouth hotel, will mean their passing down the A303 mid-afternoon on the eleventh, D-Day.”

  He paused to let the point sink in, then continued. “We forgot about the sales force at this point and concentrated on the senior staff and nonexecutive directors who would have to attend their board meeting. We are now in the process, with full support from Tadnams, of narrowing down a list of fourteen likely characters.”

  “Narrowing down?” nudged de Villiers.

  “Checking out which executives will be heading west at any point on our key stre
tch of the A303 at 3:45 p.m. in six days’ time. Meanwhile, Jake will have the equipment ready tomorrow evening and we will commence rehearsals with four stock cars at the Tadnams airstrip in Kent on the seventh. I will not have lost my touch with the control system but, as always, practice makes perfect.”

  Davies studied the road map and avoided the smug, sideways glance of his technical colleague.

  33

  During the evening of Friday, November 7, Meier stopped the car at a garage in Stockbridge and asked the elderly attendant for the best route to Exeter.

  “Well, my friend, I can tell you which way not to go, and that’s by the A30. It may look more direct, but what with its traffic problems and all, you’d be a fool to take it. Go along the A303 as far as you can, close to Honiton, then join the A30. That’s what the folks ’round here all do.”

  Two miles south of Stockbridge, Meier and Jake left their car by the roadside on the outskirts of the village of Houghton. The previous night they had visited the houses of three ML executives on the short list. Men from Tadnams had broken into other offices and homes and now the process was being repeated for the last of the listed men. Afterward, Houghton, Meier and Jake had two further calls to complete, at the homes of ML executive Pollock and another nonexecutive director, Sebire.

  There were two key items to find, and in the case of Sir Peter Horsley, the nonexecutive director of ML Holdings, both would have to be at his home in Houghton, a fine Victorian house called Park Court, since he worked from there and not in London. The only reason he had been included on the list was that he was as likely to use the A303 to go to Plymouth, as were his London-based colleagues. Tadnams had included a copy of the Who’s Who entry for Horsley, which indicated that he was a man of considerable distinction: “… 1940 Fighter Command … Commands No. 9 and No. 29 Squadrons … Equerry to Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh 1942–1952, Equerry to the Queen 1952–1953, Equerry to the Duke of Edinburgh 1953–1956 … Deputy C-in-C Strike Command 1973–1975 …” Numerous other achievements were also cataloged and Meier could only hope that, as a retired Air Marshal, Horsley did not warrant government security cover.