Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

‘Well, if you change your mind,’ Danny said. But the soldier’s attention was already on one of his colleagues walking up the steps, perhaps to take over guard duty. Danny entered the hotel.

The interior was rich-Arab gaudy. The entrance hall was lined with glass presentation cases filled with chunky gold jewellery and expensive trinkets. There was an enormous chandelier in the reception area, decorative columns at regular intervals, gold paint on the elaborate architraves and an attractive young woman playing cocktail jazz on a white grand piano in the very middle of the room. There was no overt sign of any military presence inside, but Danny wasn’t fooled by that. He saw the white man standing by the ornate elevator, casually dressed, watching Danny as he entered. He saw the man and woman sitting wordlessly at a comfortable sofa, tea things in front of them, both of them checking out all the other guests in the reception area, of whom there must have been at least thirty.

There were several exhibition boards with information in English and Arabic regarding the preliminary talks that were ongoing in the hotel in advance of the main peace talks. A plan of the hotel and its various conference rooms was pinned to one. The day’s schedule was pinned to another – hourly meetings between nine and five, and lists of attendees. General O’Brien’s name appeared several times. He’d had a busy day, and Danny hoped that once his official duties were over, he’d be ready for a spot of R and R in the hotel bar, as was his habit according to Hereford’s intel. Danny took in the hotel plan at a glance. He confirmed that there were three floors, one elevator and one staircase. The bar was ahead of him, the staircase beyond that. A couple of smartly dressed blonde women with clipboards were standing by the exhibition boards. It appeared that they were there to help delegates with information, but the business day was over now, and they looked more interested in their watches than anything else.

Danny kept moving before the blondes could ask him if he needed any help. He calculated that the best way to avoid suspicion was to make contact with a member of the hotel staff: an open display that he had nothing to hide. He walked straight up to the reception desk where a friendly looking Jordanian woman greeted him with a lovely smile. ‘May I help you sir?’

‘I hope so,’ Danny said. ‘I’m looking for the bar.’

He already knew its location from the plan on the exhibition board, but he nodded politely as she directed him to a corridor to the right of the elevator. As he walked in that direction, he saw that the watchers all had their attention elsewhere.

The bar was even plusher than the reception area. A thick burgundy carpet, with low glass tables surrounded by comfortable armchairs. The bar itself was twenty metres long with an impressive display of alcohol bottles and optics on the wall behind it. A rare sight in the Arab world but not, apparently, in Jordan. The three bartenders were not busy. There were no punters at the bar itself, and only a smattering of people sitting at the tables. One of those people was Bethany. She had installed herself at a table in the far corner, next to a bookcase filled with leather-bound books. She had a full glass and a mixer bottle in front of her and she sat with her legs crossed, nonchalantly swiping her phone. She made no attempt to acknowledge Danny’s presence, but her own was having the desired effect. The three bartenders were staring at her quite openly. One of them even seemed to be making an appreciative comment to his colleague. Danny felt a pang of antagonism towards the guy for doing that, then cursed himself for feeling it.

Mind on the job.

He took a seat in a position where he could keep an eye on Bethany as well as all his exit routes. There was the way he’d come in, two doors leading to the male and female lavatories, and a further corridor at the far end of the bar, leading away from it. One of the bartenders approached. Danny ordered a bottle of water. It came accompanied by a plate of nibbles, a small wallet of hotel-branded matches and an eye-watering bill. Danny put some notes down to pay and pocketed the matches. It was ingrained behaviour for him to take possession of any object that might come in useful at some point in the future.

He found it hard to imagine somewhere he would feel more out of place. The same couldn’t be said for Bethany. She looked as if she belonged here. And she looked stunning. Danny did what he needed to do to quell his discomfort. Back in Hereford, the CO had told Danny that they had intelligence about the General’s routine: that he was in the habit of coming to the bar for a cocktail at 18.00 hrs every evening. But what if he broke his routine? What if he didn’t turn up? Plan B would mean that Bethany had to go looking for him. That could get interesting.

For now, all they could do was stand by. He sipped his drink, surveyed the exit routes, kept Bethany in his peripheral vision, and waited.

THIRTEEN

The room was silent. Alice felt uncomfortable, sitting here with these two older men. They’d been in and out for the past four hours, one person always remaining, waiting for the call from Number 10. Now all three of them were back in the room together. She checked the time. Twenty past four. Sturrock was moisturising his hands again. Stark seemed to be making a special effort not to watch the procedure, but the slick, greasy sound was impossible to ignore. Alice’s boss removed his spectacles and made an attempt to clean them with his tie. When he put them back on, they were no less dirty, but Sturrock had finished moisturising his hands, so the process had served its purpose.

‘Peppermint, Alan?’ Stark offered. Sturrock shook his head bad-temperedly. He obviously wasn’t handling the pressure well.

The gravity of the situation was obvious. For Sturrock and Stark, the two top guys in the building, to be running this operation themselves: that was unusual. Unprecedented, so far as Alice knew. They were clearly nervous, in their own ways. When the speaker on one of the tablets burst into life again, Sturrock visibly started. Alice recognised from earlier the voice on the line to Number 10. ‘ You have a green light to proceed. Repeat, you have a green light to proceed. ’

Sturrock stood up immediately. ‘Tell Hereford it’s a go,’ he said to Stark. ‘And keep me updated.’

He left the room without another word. Stark gave Alice a thin smile. ‘Let’s see what Messrs Rostropovic and Poliakov have to say for themselves, shall we?’ he said, and he popped another mint into his mouth.

Cunningham’s phone rang while the SAS men were still poring over the plans of the building. He put it to his ear for only a few seconds before killing the line. ‘Hereford,’ he told the others. ‘It’s a go.’

The five SAS men went silently to work. Cunningham, Hobbs and Moore pulled black balaclavas over their heads and performed one last routine check of their personal weapons. Hunter and Parsons approached the manager. He was sweating profusely, clutching his hands and blinking a couple of times every second. Hunter had two options: to scare him into compliance or to try to calm him down. He knew Cunningham would default to the former strategy. Hunter didn’t think that would be the right call. The more nervous the manager looked, the more suspicious the oligarch’s bodyguards would be. These wouldn’t be goons. Rostropovic sounded to Hunter like a guy who could afford the best. And that meant ex-SF, probably. Hunter put one hand on the manager’s shoulder and gave him a reassuring smile. ‘It’s going to be fine, buddy,’ he said. ‘We do this kind of thing every day of the week. So long as you do what we say, it’ll be a walk in the park.’