Jack Higgins - Exocet

The rain was so heavy that the windscreen wipers had difficulty in handling it. He pulled in at the kerb and took a cigarette from a packet in the dashboard. He lit it and wound down the window, looking across the road at the high brick perimeter wall topped with barbed wire that enclosed the gardens at the rear of Buckingham Palace.

He rapped with his knuckles against the partition behind him. A panel opened instantly and Villiers peered out. ‘Yes?’

‘We’re here. Are you ready?’

‘Two minutes. Get us into position.’

The panel was closed and Jackson moved into gear and drove away.

The interior of the truck was crowded with the paraphernalia of the telephone engineer and brightly lit by a neon strip light. Tony Villiers braced himself against the workbench as the truck swayed, and carefully blacked his face with camouflage cream, observing the effect in a mirror propped up against a tool box.

He was thirty and of medium height with good shoulders. The eyes were dark and without expression. At some time or other his nose had been broken. His hair was black and tangled and almost shoulder-length. The black jump suit and French paratrooper’s boots combined to make him look a thoroughly dangerous man.

And there was a kind of weary bitterness to him as well; the face of someone who had got to know the world and its inhabitants too well and did not care for what he had found.

He pulled a black woollen hood over his head, leaving only his eyes free, and grabbed at the bench as the truck swung across the road, mounted the pavement and pulled in beside the wall.

A Smith & Wesson Magnum revolver with a Carswell silencer screwed on to the barrel lay on the bench beside a briefcase. He slipped it into the pouch on his right leg, opened the briefcase and took out a large black and white photo. It had been taken late on the previous afternoon with a telephoto lens and showed the Ambassador’s Entrance at the side of Buckingham Palace. There were workmen’s ladders against the wall and under the portico. More importantly, two or three windows above the flat roof were partially open.

Villiers replaced the photo and opened the panel again. ‘Twenty-five minutes, Harvey. If I’m not back, get the hell out of it.’

‘Conversation, I don’t need, not on a night like this,’ Jackson said. ‘Just get it done so we can go home.’

Villiers closed the panel, clambered up on the bench and opened a trap. He pulled himself up on the roof and closed it behind him, crouching in the rain. The wall was only a couple of yards away. He slipped across the barbed wire, grabbed for the branch of a tree, worked his way along it, hand-over-hand, then dropped into the darkness below.

The police officer on security duties at the Grosvenor Place end of the Palace gardens that morning was thoroughly unhappy with life. Soaked to the skin, wet and miserable, he had paused to shelter under a tree when the Alsatian at his side whined softly.

‘What is it, boy?’ he demanded, instantly alert, and slipped the lead. ‘Seek, boy! Seek!’

The Alsatian departed silently, but Villiers, standing beside a tree twenty or thirty yards away, was already alerted by that first whine and had reached for the aerosol spray he carried in another pouch of his jumpsuit. The dog, specially trained to silent attack, launched itself at him, and his left arm, padded against just such a situation, swung up. The Alsatian chewed savagely at the quilted material and Villiers sprayed the aerosol into its face. The animal collapsed without a sound and lay still.

A moment later, the police officer approached cautiously. ‘Rex, where are you, boy?’

Villiers’ hand rose and fell against the back of the neck in one sharp, practised blow. The police officer groaned and keeled over. Villiers pinioned him, hands behind his back, with his own handcuffs, took the officer’s radio receiver from his pocket and slipped it into another pouch of his jumpsuit. Then he started to run across the park through the darkness towards the rear of the Palace.

Harvey Jackson got out of the truck and opened the door. He reached inside, found a couple of grappling hooks, then bent down over the telephone manhole at his feet and removed it. From the truck he took an inspection lamp on a long lead which he lowered into the darkness, a red warning sign reading DANGER , MEN AT WORK, some canvas screens and an awning. He dropped into the manhole, opened one of the inspection boxes, revealing a bewildering array of multi-coloured leads and switches, and sat back and waited.

Perhaps five minutes later, there was the sound of a car and he stood up and peered over the edge as a police patrol car pulled in at the kerb. The driver leaned out, a grin on his face.

‘What a way to earn a living. Serves you right for joining.’

‘You, too,’ Jackson said.

‘Hope you’re getting double time, this hour of the bloody morning.’

‘That’ll be the day.’

The policeman grinned again. ‘Watch yourself. If this rain keeps up you’ll be swimming in there by breakfast time.’

He drove away and Jackson lit a cigarette and sat down again, whistling softly to himself, wondering how Villiers was getting on.

Villiers, who had found the workmen’s ladders still available under the portico, had reached the flat roof over the Ambassador’s Entrance with no difficulty. Two of the windows shown on the photograph were still partially open. He worked his way along a ledge, raised the nearest one and slid over the window sill into a small office. He opened the door cautiously and slipped out into a dark corridor.

The Royal Apartments were on the other side of the palace. Completely familiar with the lay-out from his study of the plans supplied to him, he now moved with considerable rapidity through a maze of corridors, all deserted as he had expected at that time of the morning. Some five minutes later he stood at the end of the corridor leading to the private quarters.

The Queen’s apartment was only a few yards away – a dining room leading into a sitting room, the bedroom beyond, he knew that. Further on, around another corner, was a room where the corgis slept. In the page’s vestibule opposite, a police constable sat reading a paperback book.

Villiers observed him carefully for a moment, then retreated down the corridor and took out the radio transceiver he had taken from the policeman in the park. He pressed the channel four button and waited.

There was a slight crackle. A voice said, ‘Jones here.’

Villiers replied in a soft voice, ‘Security office. The picture gallery alarm seems to be playing up again. We’re getting an intermittent signal. Give it a quick check, will you?’

‘Okay,’ Jones said.

Villiers moved to the corner again and peered round in time to see the police constable moving away along the corridor in the other direction. He turned at the end and disappeared. Villiers moved instantly to the door of the Queen’s apartment. He paused for a moment, took a deep breath and opened it.

Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the Second, was seated by the fire in her comfortable sitting room reading a book. In spite of the early hour, she was perfectly groomed and wore a pale blue twin-set and tweed skirt, pearls at her throat. A slight creaking from the door caused her to raise her head. It opened and Villiers stepped into the room, closing the door behind him.

He looked extremely menacing in the black jumpsuit and hood, only the eyes showing. There was a silence for a moment and then he reached up and pulled the hood over his head.

‘Ah, Major Villiers,’ the Queen said. ‘Was it difficult?’

‘I’m afraid not, ma’am.’

The Queen frowned. ‘I see. Well, we’d better get on with it. You are on limited time, I presume?’