James Patterson - Private London

I ignored Sam’s taunting grin and kept my gaze fixed ahead. Below me the traffic was as snarled as Lucy had said it would be. Above us the chopper’s rotor blade thwopped and spun, but the ride was incredibly smooth. Thankfully there was very little wind.

In very little time we had made the twenty-six mile journey and were flying over Moor Park.

Normally a helicopter flying over a residential area might have caused some interest. But a huge military base, much of it underground, was half a mile away. HMS Warrior where Western Allied Fleet Command was based. The command centre for the Falklands War and also home to the USAF which had a base there. Helicopters in the air thereabouts were a very common occurrence.

As we flew over the target house I pointed the thermal-image device I was holding at it and put the lens to my eyes. The house went the familiar murky green you get through night-vision goggles, but little dots of colour appeared. Glowing red and indicating the heat signatures of human beings. Live ones, anyway. I counted six. Four moving downstairs and two static ones upstairs. I figured those to be Harlan Shapiro and whoever was guarding him. I hoped that was the case, anyway – it meant he was alive, at least.

The helicopter banked again. I hated when it did that and was sure that Sam did it deliberately. The Palestinian translator’s house was set apart from the others in a small private road that led to Moor Park Golf Course. Famous for hosting the Bob Hope Classic for a number of years, but most notable for the current clubhouse having once been the residence, along with Hampton Court Palace, of one Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, ill-fated adviser to Henry the Eighth and the man who had given his name to the university where Harlan Shapiro had sent his daughter to be safe.

The irony was not lost on me.

Sam manoeuvred the helicopter to a hovering standstill. Lucy opened the door and threw out the long black rope, one end fixed securely inside. At least, I damn well hoped it was securely fixed.

Del Rio checked that his pistol was firm in its holster and went out first, grabbing the rope and sliding down it as easily as if it were a fireman’s pole.

I was next. I clipped the harness ring round the rope, checked it and took a deep breath. I was earning my pay cheque this weekend, no doubt about that. But I had trained to abseil. Just because I didn’t like it didn’t mean I couldn’t do it. I didn’t say ‘Geronimo’. I said something entirely less gleeful and stepped out, dropping down the rope in short sequences. The rope was still some eight feet from the ground when I released fully and dropped.

We had picked a soft target. The seventeenth green on the West Course. A short par four, surrounded on three sides by trees.

Not long afterwards Suzy thudded to the ground a few yards from me. Less than thirty seconds after that and all three of us were thankfully back on terra firma.

I looked at the damage that we had done to the soft ground and guessed that the greenkeeper would be none too happy come the morning.

I signalled to the others and we headed off. The house was some hundred yards away behind the trees. As we moved into the cover of them no alarm sounded – no sirens, no shouting.

So far, so good.

A movement behind me. I turned too late.

I dropped like a felled tree.

Some time later I came to and tried to move.

I couldn’t. My hands had been tied behind my back to a wooden chair. Suzy and Del Rio sat beside me, similarly trussed.

My head felt like I’d landed on it when I’d dropped from the helicopter. But I was alive and I was conscious. I guess my skull was a bit thicker than Chloe’s, which would be unusual. Female skulls are usually a little thicker than men’s. Maybe whoever had hit me hadn’t been as good as Chloe’s attacker.

We were in the lounge of a very expensively decorated house. There was colour everywhere. Golds and reds and greens. On the expensive rugs that dotted the floor, on the wallpaper that covered the walls, on the drapes that were curled back from the French windows that led out to an extensive lawn, and on the exquisitely upholstered furniture.

I lifted my head and looked across at Suzy and Del Rio, wincing as the pain nailed through the back of my head.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘You were hit with a golf club.’

‘A driver,’ added Suzy. ‘Titleist, I think.’

‘And you guys?’

‘People stepped out with semi-automatic weapons. A few of them. We considered it politic to comply with their instructions.’

‘Hard to argue with an AK-47’

Del Rio nodded. ‘That is a fact.’

‘So what’s the plan?’

‘Not formulated one as such.’

At that moment Harlan Shapiro walked into the room.

Harlan Shapiro’s mouth was bound with duct tape and he held his hands high in the air.

He was followed in by Annabelle Weston holding a gun, and by a woman wearing the full burka.

‘So it was the professor in the drawing room with the revolver all along,’ I said.

‘Sit over there,’ Annabelle said to Harlan, ignoring me and gesturing with her gun to a high-backed red leather chair.

Harlan Shapiro crossed over and sat down. Outside, a large man in black fatigues and with a scarf wrapped round his head walked past the French windows.

Mujahedin as security guards. Nice neighbourhood.

‘And you must be Mary Angela,’ I said, addressing the woman in the burka. ‘Shame to cover yourself up – you have beautiful eyes.’

The woman swept her hand up, removing the part of her garment covering her head, and swinging her lustrous hair behind her. She looked at me and smiled.

‘That’s very courteous of you to say so.’

I must have registered some surprise because her smile deepened. ‘Oh, I only wear it when it suits.’

‘Nice house you have, too. Mister Burka must be paid a pretty penny for his translation skills.’

‘I own the house, Mister Carter,’ said Annabelle Weston.

Of course she did. ‘Please call me Dan,’ I said. ‘I feel we’re bonding, Annabelle.’

‘I am sure you are a very charming man, Dan. You’re handsome, clearly very resourceful, more intelligent than you pretend to be.’ Annabelle shrugged. ‘I don’t know, in another life.’

I didn’t like the sound of that. ‘I quite like this life,’ I said, hoping that my voice was sounding steady.

‘I have no intention of harming you. Nobody needs to get hurt here.’

‘Tell that to the guy who used the back of my head as a tee peg,’ I said.

Annabelle frowned. ‘I’m sorry about that. That wasn’t supposed to happen. One of my team with a personal grudge against you. He has been reprimanded.’

‘Seems to have happened once before. Once too often,’ I said.

‘Again, that was never our intention.’

‘So what is your intention?’ asked Del Rio. I could see his jaw working harder than usual. His hands behind the chair flexing and unflexing, trying to loosen the rope.

‘Like I said. Nobody is going to be hurt as long as you cooperate’

‘So what’s the figure? Five million was just for openers, we get that. So what’s the number?’ Del Rio said.

‘It was never about money.’

‘So what is it about, you mad bitch?’ said Suzy coolly, possibly not helping matters.

‘It’s about justice,’ said Mary Angela Al-Massri.

‘For your brother?’

‘No, Mister Carter. For Palestine.’

‘And your husband thinks this will achieve it?’

‘My husband has nothing to do with this. Right now he is at a conference in Brussels.’

‘So the pair of you figured that you’d solve the problems of Palestine by kidnapping an American millionaire and demanding what for his release? That Israel allow you to set up a nation state just like that?’