Ranulph Fiennes - Killer Elite

Symins had sunk a good deal of his drug profits into this house and its comprehensive security arrangements. Apart from his driver and domestic staff there was a live-in gardener who doubled as in-house heavy.

Symins enjoyed a double brandy in front of a log fire while Diana, naked to the waist, massaged his shoulders and neck. Looking into the flames he again felt a surge of adrenaline as he remembered Jason’s bulging eyeballs. The drill had slowly penetrated skin and bone, and the man’s limbs, though nailed to the door, had jerked out in ginglymus rhythm. A weird smell had emanated from the drill bit which, making heavy weather of the patella itself, had heated up inside the wound. Yes, he had been right to punish Jason. Even if the man was innocent of squealing, it did no harm to show the others that Patrice Symins was not a man to cross. Word of Jason’s drilling was bound to get about the city and that could only help Symins’s reputation as a hard man. He felt pleasantly tired.

As he made to move, Diana slipped a caressing hand lightly over his crotch. “Not tonight, Josephine,” he laughed. “I’m knackered, love.” His philosophy was simple with Diana where bed was concerned: sleep with her only when horny, otherwise there was no point. Familiarity would dull the edge of his reactions to her sensuality.

Symins kept no gun at hand in his house. He trusted his security systems and staff enough to feel totally at ease. There were alarm buttons in those rooms he frequented but at home he liked to drop his antennae and relax. Tonight he lazed in the jacuzzi and then, as usual, took the day’s Financial Times to bed with him, for he handled his own considerable investment portfolio without advisers.

Soundlessly Hallett and Mason moved out from behind the heavy brocade curtains and across the soft carpet. Not until the blade of Hallett’s penknife was pressed into the side of his Adam’s apple did Symins even sense his visitors’ presence. His first thought was for the alarm button beside his bed. Hallett read his mind. “The systems in your suite are both cut, so forget the heavies. The slightest move of your head and you will undergo the fastest cricothyroidectomy since the Korean War.”

Mason pulled the duvet off the bed, placed plastic handcuffs over Symins’s wrists and then lashed his feet together. Only then did Darrell withdraw his knife. On evenings such as this both Locals had often regretted Spike’s dictum that they should never carry firearms when in Britain.

A pretentious chandelier of crystal baubles dangled in the middle of the ceiling. Mason applied his weight to its centerpiece. “Solid,” he exclaimed and, locking Symins’s hands behind his back, he joined the cuffs to the chandelier with a loop of parachute cord. He then pulled steadily until Symins’s arms were taut and the drug baron was standing on tiptoe to counter the sharp pain in his shoulders.

“This is known in Tehran’s Evin Prison as the Savaki Meat Hook,” David explained, “but we must ensure silence before the next step is taken.”

“How much money do you want?” Symins mouthed. “Name your price and I’ll give you cash here and now.”

“He comes straight to the point, doesn’t he?” said Darrell, forcing his thumb into the side of Symins’s mouth with the same action he used for training gun dogs. He forced Symins’s socks into his mouth, then tied the cord of his dressing gown firmly around his neck and open mouth like a horse’s bit. “Soundproof,” he muttered. Together they hauled at the parachute cord until Symins could reach the floor with his toes, but only with great difficulty.

Mason sat on the end of the bed, lit up a Montecristo Number 5 and leafed through the Financial Times. This was Darrell’s pigeon. Jo had remained in the rhododendrons below, safe from Symins’s Rhodesian ridgebacks due to the bags of aniseed powder he had sprinkled liberally between where the others had crossed the wall and the drainpipe leading to Symins’s bedroom window.

“Who are we?” Darrell asked Symins, and getting no reply, jabbed him in the stomach, so that he swung back and forth gently until the tips of his toes were again able to take some weight and alleviate the excruciating pain in his arms. “We are two of many men who have been asked to watch you. Wherever you go in this country, we will not be far away. Ten years from now we will be keeping tabs. What you do with your own people, boyo, is not our concern. If they put up with your sadism, so be it. But”-Darrell gave Symins another shove on behalf of Jason-“your drug activities will cease completely as from tonight. To help you never to forget this evening, we will stay with you for an hour or so. If, in the future, you look back and remember this little dalliance in hell, please know that it is but a mild introduction to next time.”

He hauled hard on the cord with one hand while hoisting upward with his other hand crooked in Symins’s crotch. He did not want the chandelier fixture to break. Symins now swung free. He was not in pain-he was in agony. Most of us go through life without experiencing more than a few seconds of such anguish.

Darrell concluded his monologue. “Make no mistake, perhaps in five years’ time, in thinking there will not be a next time. If you touch the drug world again we will visit you in earnest.” He glanced at his watch, then making himself comfortable in an easy chair, he pulled out a paperback of George Borrow’s 1862 travel classic, Wild Wales. At home Darrell had a collection of hardback travel and adventure stories, many of them signed by the authors. Often, when he had a spare hour or two, he would phone around publishers and old bookshops to chase up titles long out of print, to fill gaps in his collection.

After thirty minutes they lowered Symins to the carpet for ten minutes. Then they raised him on tiptoe for fifteen, and finally at dangle height for a further half hour. When they departed they left him still suspended but with his feet on the ground.

Hallett silently hoped Symins would be non compos mentis by the time his breakfast was brought up in the morning. It would depend largely on his pain threshold.

Mason did not bother to reset the alarm circuit on their way out. Spike could hardly make a fuss over a couple of lost circuit-breaker sets. They followed Hongozo over the wall and he drove them back to their cars in the city.

“An honor to meet you, mister.” The Hungarian shook Mason’s hand. They did not know each other’s names. He hugged Darrell in his East European way. “Don’t make it too long until next time, my friend.”

The two Locals parted. Hallett was subdued. It would be days before he lost the vision of the eight-inch nails appearing through the lockup doors. Mason was unaffected. The proceedings had gone off as Spike would have wanted. The result might well be as hoped. He stopped at a telephone booth and called Spike’s answering machine. “Everything is fine,” he said. He gave neither the time nor his name. Spike would be in his flat listening to the machine and would recognize David’s voice. If anything had gone wrong, he would have done what he could as an individual, but without committee involvement. That was their way.

The Seine, the music of an unseen accordion and the Gallic bustle of the Marche Vernaison flea market drifted by the Gypsy cafe, lulling its diners, mostly tourists, into a nostalgic haze. The waiters were Gypsies clad in black berets and aprons, and there was an air of slick disdain about their trim moustaches. The head waiter, who fancied himself a bit of a Maigret, decided that the three gentlemen at table seven were international businessmen. Their lack of raincoats suggested that they had come from the only hotel close by, the George V. He deduced they had already spent a couple of nights at the hotel since its in-house restaurant, Les Princes, served exquisite food enhanced by a famous cellar. He nudged the sous-chef. “Sanch will do well at number seven. Those three are from the George. If they can afford nine hundred a night they will add twenty percent service, no problem.”