Tom Cain - Assassin

One of Tyzack’s men, Ron Geary, had trailed Selsey from the moment he stepped on to the street outside the MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross, obeyed the signals that took him across several lanes of rush-hour traffic and stepped up to the platform at Vauxhall railway station, where he took a train to the terminus at Waterloo. There he made the five-minute walk across to the suburban services at Waterloo East, spent ten minutes browsing magazines at a WHSmith bookstall and buying a cup of Earl Grey tea before getting on his regular evening train to Lee in the south-east suburbs of London.

Like most of Tyzack’s more reliable employees, Geary was a Special Forces veteran. He was therefore well able to spot the tail that MI6 had put on Selsey and make sure that he was not spotted himself. Along the way, he sent pictures of both MI6 officers from his phone to Tyzack, who was being driven south in the back of a white Ford Transit van, as anonymous a form of transport as the roads of Britain provide.

Geary stayed on the train, handing over the surveillance to another one of Tyzack’s people, who picked up Selsey as he came out of Lee station and turned right on to Burnt Ash Road. Neither Selsey nor his MI6 tail noticed the harassed-looking woman smoking a cigarette and pushing a baby-carriage who followed them along the busy commuter route, still laden with the last dregs of evening traffic trying to get on to the South Circular.

Her name was Raifa Ademovic. She had arrived in Britain five years earlier as an illegal immigrant, imported by Tyzack just as he was establishing his own trafficking network. With her greasy hair, prominent nose and almost permanent scowl, Raifa was never going to be of much value in the brothel to which she was first shipped. But the remarkable number of credit cards, banknotes, driving licences and wallets that she managed to lift from her paltry clients suggested that she might have other, exploitable talents. When she reacted to a john who tried to give her a playful smack by punching, clawing and biting him into the nearest A &E department that impression was confirmed. Tyzack had been making good use of her bad attitude ever since.

Raifa turned into the side road on which Selsey lived and watched as he approached and entered his semi-detached home. With a sullen defiance typical of her character, she stopped directly opposite the house, in full view of anyone inside it, or standing guard outside. She walked round to the front of the baby-carriage and briefly made encouraging noises at the small child – borrowed from a friend – who sat there, doped to the gills with motion-sickness tablets. Then she lit another cigarette, turned her back on the captive toddler and dialled a number on her mobile phone. In the genteel, middle-class area where Selsey lived, plenty of respectable citizens might disapprove of such blatantly bad mothering, but none would suspect her true purpose.

‘He is in house now,’ she told Tyzack. ‘I see three other men. One following Selsey, he go inside house with him. Another man, he meet them at door, stay in house also. Final man in car outside. He watch Selsey go by, raise hand to say hello to man following, then make call. I guess he tell boss, OK, they get here.’

‘Are they armed?’ Tyzack asked.

‘Man following Selsey, he carrying gun for sure. Other two, I could not see. But if they trying to protect him, why not carry gun?’

‘Why not, indeed. Thank you, my dear. I really don’t know what I would do without you, even though you really are quite remarkably unattractive.’

Raifa spat on the ground, loud enough for Tyzack to hear the hawk. ‘Hey, fuck you too!’ she said, and then hung up.

In his Transit van, now circling London on the M25, Tyzack laughed. There were very few people in the world he would ever allow to be so rude to him. But there was something so relentlessly unpleasant about Raifa Ademovic that he found himself admiring her more than any other woman he knew. There was none of that cringing desire to please that oozed from so many females, not the remotest attempt at seduction, just an unbending hostility. That, thought Damon Tyzack, is my kind of woman.

‘Thank you, Assistant Commissioner,’ said Dame Agatha, who was both the host and chairperson of the meeting called to discuss the appropriate response to Tyzack and the potential threat he posed to the President’s life. ‘I think we can all agree that every possible precaution is being taken. Rear-Admiral Johnstone?’

Manners stepped back from the screen and his place was taken by a short, stocky man in naval uniform, his rank denoted by the thick golden band around the wrist of his dark blue uniform jacket, topped by a thinner, looped band. He stood with his feet apart, as if Dame Agatha’s office on the top floor of Thames House, an office building on the north bank of the river Thames, might at any moment be hit by a rogue wave or sudden squall.

‘I’ll be dealing with the joint Navy-RAF response to this new threat of air attack,’ he said in a calm, reassuring Scots accent. ‘Essentially, we will be stepping up the level of protection that was already in place. Eurofighter Typhoon jets from 3 (Fighter) Squadron, based at Coningsby in Lincolnshire, are ready at all times to scramble within three minutes as part of their Quick Reaction Alert capability. The original plan was thus to keep them on the ground, awaiting the order to scramble. Three Typhoons will now be patrolling the airspace above and around Bristol before, during and immediately after the President’s speech.’

A soft smile crossed his ruddy, square-jawed face. ‘We have assured the Americans that the Typhoons will be close enough to protect Mr Roberts, but not so close as to drown out his voice.’

As a gentle murmur of amusement rippled around the room, Johnstone continued, ‘We will be telling the media about the RAF presence over Bristol. We think it will make for a good wee story. It will also distract them from the Navy’s contribution. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the Type 45 destroyer. This is the first of them, HMS Daring. She’s a very rare lassie. We originally ordered twelve Type 45s. That order was cut to six, for financial reasons. And now, in the current climate, we’ll be lucky to see three. But she’s a very splendid lassie, too, for all that.’

A picture appeared of a long, low hull topped by a series of huge triangular towers.

‘Looks like a bloody great grey Toblerone,’ mused Grantham.

‘Aye, she’s not the prettiest of craft,’ Johnstone admitted. ‘But she’s clever enough. Her radar can track more than a thousand targets at once and her missile systems are so accurate and so fast that they can detect and destroy a projectile the size of a cricket ball travelling at three times the speed of sound.’

Carver gave a low whistle. ‘So they could detect a man in freefall, then?’ he asked.

‘Och aye, no trouble.’

‘Ouch!’ Carver winced, thinking of that night above Currituck Sound.

‘Do you think Tyzack might attempt some kind of parachute jump?’ asked Manners.

‘Something like that. But it seems he’d be ill advised.’

‘Aye,’ said Johnstone with gentle relish. ‘That he would. And if he tries he’ll get a very nasty surprise.’

‘Which leaves us with Mr Tyzack himself,’ said Dame Agatha. ‘Jack, perhaps you would bring us up to date on efforts to find him?’

Carver could see Manners frown. Grantham was an MI6 man. Domestic security was not his business. That was strictly an MI5/police affair.

Grantham saw his reaction. ‘I appreciate my involvement here is unusual,’ he said. ‘But we’ve been tracking Tyzack’s movements for some time, although, while we were doing so, we were not aware of his identity.’