Robert Young - Gatecrasher

He turned to the noise and moved quickly to the spot, bending slightly to peer into it. There was a clattering sound that quickly followed as the stone dropped over the edge to the rocks below. The man stood still for a long moment. Perhaps he would think that they were making their way down to the cove.

Still he paused at the bushes, looking off into the darkness.

Come on, thought Campbell, take the bait.

Nothing.

Finding another stone on the ground, Campbell again hefted it toward the same spot. But then something awful happened.

As the stone flew up through the trees that hid him, it clattered into branches and the man turned and then began making his way quickly along the path.

Right toward Campbell.

In seconds the man was within feet of him, and though he had not seen him yet would spot him quickly and he knew it.

In two strides Campbell was on him. Stumbling slightly over the uneven ground he connected his shoulder solidly into the man’s side and took him off his feet. As they hit the ground, Campbell heard, rather than saw, the knife jarred loose from his attacker’s hand and clatter across the path and into the darkness. They rolled across the rough ground and as they came to a stop on the wet grass, Campbell brought a knee up but it failed to make a serious contact and thudded into a thigh.

The other man responded quickly and began hammering fists rapidly into his back. Campbell’s adrenalin was rising and the bones and muscles of his back soaked up the blows without troubling him. Struggling on the ground, both of them tried to pick themselves up and as they moved Campbell felt an elbow crack into his ribs and he almost yelped in pain.

This wasn’t missed and he felt a fist jab into his chest sharply again and this time he did make a noise but managed to stop himself from crying out.

Galvanised by pain and fear and surging adrenaline Campbell swung a fist at his attacker which landed uselessly on his shoulder, merely rocking him backward. Campbell had a split-second to look him over as they wrestled and tried to stand and he wondered if he knew the man, had he seen him before? How had he found them? Had he followed all the way from London, from his flat back in Fulham? But there was no time to think where he might have seen him before because he was coming at him again, hands clawing at his throat.

Pulling away he lost his balance and slipped on the grass over onto his back and the other man was quickly on top of him. He used his momentum to roll and dragged him over and then as the man’s weight moved right above Campbell he kicked out, shoving his feet hard into his assailant’s midriff and straightening both legs, sending him sliding across the wet grass and away.

Continuing the roll he was back on his feet quickly but he had taken his eyes off the other man for a moment and now couldn’t see him at all as he stood and frantically scanned all about, waiting to be rushed again.

As he stepped gingerly forward in the shadows he could see the flattened grass at his feet and then, as he searched the ground ahead of him there was suddenly a loud sound of sliding, scraping and a shifting of stones and then a brief silence.

And then he heard a short cry from below him, full of terror and desperation

And then a thick, crunching, thud that sent a feeling through Campbell like there was ice in his veins and he thought he was going to vomit.

Eyes wide and chest heaving he dropped to his knees and stared blankly at the cliff edge. Then he crawled to it and looked over.

Monday. 11am.

The cold, pale light of the day outside told of approaching winter and he could almost feel the chill as he stood in his warm, comfortable office.

On his desk lay that morning’s newspaper. The lead story was about a terrorist atrocity in a tourist resort in Turkey, which had been blamed on Kurdish extremists.

There was a small column about the possibility of the Government’s opponents lowering income tax as an election pledge. There was also a banner across the top about the colour photos that could be found on pages 4 and 5 from the wedding of a leading British actor.

Geoffrey Asquith’s name was nowhere to be found but he worried all the same. If not today, then perhaps tomorrow or sometime soon.

Days were passing in agonising silence with no word from anyone about who was behind the break in at Griffin Holdings or what their intentions were. Andrew Griffin had come to see him and told him all about the evidence of Horner’s activities in the early 1990’s, how the paper trail had remained hidden deep in the company’s records for long years.

Horner had admitted this to him without too much of a fight. Once it was apparent what Asquith already knew, Horner had surrendered any pretence of innocence and admitted to it all. Initially flippant and dismissive, Horner had seemed gradually to lose his nerve and the tables had turned almost completely now. More than once Asquith had angrily hung up the phone on the man, telling him not to panic, to wait and see what would happen. Until then he had other things on his mind, things that he could deal with, that were within his control.

By the end of the week Asquith would have to deliver his verdict on a proposed Dam building project in Malaysia. The project would be part funded by the British Department for International Development, which existed with the official mandate to help eradicate poverty and hunger in the poorer countries of the world. Most often this came in the form of aid packages and grants to the countries in question which would often go to large infrastructure projects; gas and electricity supplies, schools and hospitals, roads and bridges.

As a matter of course however, such projects, which were often on a massive scale, requiring expertise, experience and sophistication in order to implement them, the contracts for their construction went to companies outside the recipient country. Usually, in fact, to companies within the donor country.

This was nothing new and Geoffrey Asquith knew it. He did feel more than a little guilty and hypocritical that ‘aid’ packages for these poor countries often amounted to little more than back-door investment in British industry. But he still believed that in most cases, if the execution might leave something to be desired, the end results still benefited the people they were supposed to.

If a dam helped provide electricity to the homes of many thousands of families who might otherwise be without it, what did they care whether a British company built it instead of a local one? What matter that a foreign firm was paid to construct much needed municipal facilities in a poor and run-down city?

This Malaysian project was not without its critics though. Thousands of acres of land would be flooded as a result of the dam and many thousands of local people displaced. An ancient religious site would also be lost beneath the reservoir as well as the breeding sites of rare birds that existed in only a few other places in the region now.

But the hydroelectric power plant would need to be manned and run and that would create employment. Also, with the power it provided to the local area, industry could flourish and more jobs would be created, helping improve the economy and the quality of life for tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of people.

Asquith’s task was firstly to decide whether it would go ahead in the face of the opposition it had received and then to decide which of the firms that had tendered for the multi-million pound contracts would get them. The first point he knew was a formality. The opposition could not stand in the way of the project, the fate of which had long ago been decided. It was the latter job that would occupy his time now and he would need to meet with the last of various committees and interest groups and non-governmental organisations before presenting his final decision.