Ranulph Fiennes - Killer Elite

The three men set to work to the pattern preestablished by Meier and Jake. There was little noise and no unanticipated problem.

The brake fluid was drained into a drip tray, and the brake lines, disconnected from the master cylinder, were connected to outlets from the change-over valves. These last were preconnected to the modified cylinders and to their servo motors. The wiring to the receivers was also already in place.

Separate lines from the change-over valves, labeled “Normal,” were connected back to the BMW’s master cylinder. Then came the tricky job of tracing the positive wires from each ABS system and fitting the electric relays in series for connection to the single channel receiver. Using specialist tapes, Meier and Jake clamped the many new units firmly in place and, via a voltage transformer, affixed the receivers and servo motors to the car battery. The system and the five reservoirs were then topped up with brake fluid when set both at Normal and at Remote.

With the car’s own jack in position and one wheel off the ground, de Villiers spun the wheel manually. Meier, as though by magic, then stopped the rotation by touching a temporary remote transmitter control. All four wheels were tested in this manner and the air cylinder then topped up to two hundred bar from the fully pressurized fifteen-liter driver’s bottle.

Meier then set the system to Normal, the three remote transmitters to Off, the three receivers to On, and the air cylinder’s hand valve to fully open. The system was primed.

By the time every visible sign of their presence was removed and the swing doors were open again, the only trace of the eight-hour visit was a faint smell of brake fluid mingled with sweat, and even that had dissipated by dawn.

John Smythe had no dependents and lived easily on his means as a freelance photographer. He was never happier than when doing a job for Spike. He remembered Mantell, who first recruited him, but Spike epitomized the sort of person he would himself like to be. He never considered the possibility of being paid for his time and seldom passed his expenses to Spike. Smythe hero-worshiped his Nottingham coal-miner father, and knew he would have approved, if he were still alive, of everything Spike stood for. He felt he was doing his bit for Blighty, for the well-being of his fellow citizens and, as Spike had once put it, acting as a freelance ferret-man to seek out those vermin the official gamekeepers do not catch.

He was slightly uneasy about the day ahead since none of the four Locals cooperating over the Marman watch could help out until the evening, so he was entirely alone for the day. To follow a mobile “mark” without being spotted requires great concentration and quick reactions; a far more demanding task than can be imagined by someone who has not tried it.

Marman had left Blandfield Road at 11:05 a.m., filled up the 2CV with 3-Star leaded petrol at a fuel station on the M3, and arrived at Steeple Langford in Wiltshire’s Wylye Valley at 12:45 p.m. Smythe parked well away from the entrance to the drive of Manor House and sat himself down at the upper rim of a cow field. There was a blustery autumn wind but he wore a battered Barbour jacket and tweed cap. He had, as always on jobs for Spike, an old gas-mask carrier containing a coffee flask, cheese sandwiches, and his late father’s binoculars.

Mike Marman was in a very fine mood because Rose May had telephoned him the previous evening to say her father had agreed to pay for their sons’ private education costs: an enormous load off Marman’s shoulders. He was also happy to be seeing his hosts, General Robin Brockbank and his wife, Gillie. The general, now colonel of Marman’s old regiment, had also been its commanding officer at the time Marman joined up.

The Brockbanks were full of advice and information to help Marman find civilian employment, and he much enjoyed the meal with them. He drank only a gin and tonic and a glass of wine because he was driving and felt pleasantly relaxed when he took his leave at 3:15 p.m., with ample time to get back to Clapham during office working hours.

Smythe found that he could not tail the 2CV quite as he would have liked, due to the presence of a white Ford Escort that kept to the same route and some distance behind the Marman car.

As his wife was away visiting her mother in the north, Sir Peter rose early and worked with his secretary, Mrs. Bromley, in the outhouse office until lunchtime on his board papers and the agenda for the following day. He planned to arrive at the Moorland Links Hotel in Yelverton, near Plymouth, by 6 p.m., in plenty of time for the Board dinner that evening.

After a leisurely lunch he reversed the BMW out onto the drive and switched on the car radio to keep him company on the long drive down the A303.

Meier nodded to Jake. The Volvo nudged away from the curb in the center of Houghton and a stone’s throw from Park Court.

Some twenty minutes later, at 3:25 p.m., as the Volvo passed the Bulford turning off the A303, heading west, de Villiers’s voice came over Meier’s CB radio: “2CV doing seventy miles per hour. Just crossed the A360 turn-off. Out.”

Meier’s fingers flickered on his calculator. He muttered to Jake, “Marman will reach the big roundabout in three minutes. We will be there in one and a half minutes. Horsley must keep his speed up so we meet well clear of the far side of the roundabout.”

De Villiers’s voice again: “At the Stonehenge fork now. One and a half miles to the roundabout. Still seventy miles per hour. One car behind me. All clear ahead of Marman. Out.”

Meier’s veins stood out on his forehead. His knuckles were white as he clutched at the control board strapped to his left thigh. “Dammit. Geh schnell, mach schnell, man. ”

But Sir Peter was in no hurry. A Bedford horse box with a woman driver was already on the roundabout and using the same exit lane. Sir Peter slowed down and only began to overtake it when clear of the roundabout.

De Villiers’s voice cut through the babble of Meier’s cursing: “2CV still seventy miles per hour. Last stretch to the roundabout. Still no cars ahead of Marman.

Out.”

“No good,” yelled Meier at Jake. “The horse van is in the way… quick, overtake, overtake… No, the horse-van driver will suspect. You must get past Horsley too… go on, go on… I can operate okay looking back.”

The road was almost dry, the sky overcast but visibility excellent. The highway climbed gently to the west with an almost imperceptible leftward curve.

Sir Peter had overtaken the horse van at sixty-five miles per hour and was intending to return to the inside lane. He glanced in his mirror to check that all was clear behind him in that lane and, accelerating gently to seventy, he was halfway back across the central broken white lines when a large car overtook him.

At this point the nightmare began. The BMW appeared to yaw violently and Sir Peter’s heart missed a beat as he clearly felt the car’s rear end lurch sideways. A burst tire? He could not be certain but what was increasingly clear, as he struggled to control the now wildly snaking vehicle, was that neither the steering nor the braking system was having any effect on the chaotic course of his maverick car. It was as though the car had developed a mind of its own. It swerved to the right and struck the curb of the center grass divider.

Sir Peter sensed the red blur of an approaching car before the actual impact. The 2CV, traveling at seventy miles per hour, struck the BMW head-on and Marman was killed instantly, his skull fractured. His car spun away to the very edge of a sheer forty-foot embankment.

Jake was cheering. “Perfect… ausgezeichnet… You are a genius.” He had seen the crash in his mirror. “Nobody could survive. The 2CV is like a concertina.”