Condor (The Gabriel Wolfe Thrillers Book 3) Read online

  CONDOR

  The third Gabriel Wolfe thriller

  ANDY MASLEN

  For Jane and Charles Kingsmill,

  with love and affection.

  ALSO BY ANDY MASLEN

  The Gabriel Wolfe series

  Trigger Point

  Reversal of Fortune (short story)

  Blind Impact

  Coming soon…

  Hit and Run: the first DI Stella Cole thriller

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to my first readers: Katherine Wildman, Vanessa Knowles, Merryn Henderson, and Giles Elliott. You helped ensure I had the makings of a good story in its early days. I am also indebted to the members of my Readers’ Group Inner Circle.

  Thank you to my friends in the Salisbury Writing Circle: having people to talk writing with has enriched my life.

  As always, I want to thank my friends and military advisers for keeping my vocabulary and tactical descriptions vaguely within the realms of acceptability: Colonel Mike Dempsey and Giles Bassett. Also Chief Superintendent Sean Memory for helping me understand some of the intricacies of police operations.

  In this book I borrowed a couple of episodes from other people’s lives and embroidered or tailored them to fit the story. To one modest man in particular, I want to say thanks: Mark Budden, for a story of everyday heroism that I borrowed and allowed Gabriel to inhabit briefly at Oxford Circus.

  My editorial and publishing team continue to amaze me with their talent and skill. Thank you to my editor, Michelle Lowery; my designer, Darren Bennett; my proofreader Jessica Holland; and the production team at Polgarus Studio, Jason and Marina Anderson.

  And to you, my reader, for buying this book, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  Andy Maslen

  Salisbury, July 2016

  Copyright © 2016 Andy Maslen

  Published by

  Tyton Press, an imprint of

  Sunfish Ltd

  PO Box 2107

  Salisbury SP2 2BW

  T: 0844 502 2061

  www.andymaslen.com

  The right of Andy Maslen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Requests for permission should be addressed to the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover illustration copyright © Darren Bennett

  Cover design by DKB Creative

  Author photograph for the print edition © Kin Ho

  Editing by Michelle Lowery at Polgarus Studio

  Formatted by Polgarus Studio

  Table of Contents

  ALSO BY ANDY MASLEN

  Acknowledgements

  1 - God’s Tears

  2 - Père Christophe

  3 - Aftermath

  4 - A Wounded Man

  5 - The Second Order

  6 - Invitation to COBRA

  7 - Remembering Eloise Payne

  8 - Investor Meeting

  9 - A Meeting with Barbara Sutherland

  10 - The COBRA Wakes

  11 - Planning Another Cleansing

  12 - The Meaning of Free Speech

  13 - Departmental Protocol

  14 - Hollywood Aflame

  15 - Deputised

  16 - Rescuing the Fallen

  17 - The War of Drugs

  18 - The First Piece of Evidence

  19 - I Blame the Parents

  20 - All Power Corrupts

  21 - Where Eloise Went

  22 - A Bomber’s Bedroom

  23 - A Deal Takes Shape

  24 - DOBAG

  25 - Session with Fariyah Crace

  26 - One Hand Washes the Other

  27 - Something’s Up

  28 - Going to See a Man About a Cult

  29 - Blasphemy

  30 - Hello, and Goodbye

  31 - Wealth Doesn’t Bring You Happiness

  32 - Let Go of Your Troubles

  33 - How to Kill a Politician

  34 - How Time Flies

  35 - Ask and Ye Shall Be Rewarded

  36 - Summoned to Eden

  37 - Where the Nuts Come From

  38 - Target Acquired

  39 - Exposed …

  40 - … and Alone

  41 - A Test of Faith

  42 - Blessed Are the Bomb Makers

  43 - Semper Fidelis

  44 - An Unwelcome Invitation

  45 - Gabriel Wolfe, Suicide Bomber

  46 - How to Deal with Child Abuse

  47 - Two Red Buttons

  48 - Release

  49 - Mission Resumed

  50 - The War on Drugs

  51 - Daylight Robbery

  52 - Blood and Wine

  53 - Poker Faces

  54 - Cheats Never Prosper

  55 - Filhos de Satan

  56 - Rumbled. Again.

  57 - Passport, Ticket, Money

  58 - Competition

  59 - Now All I Need Is a Red Beret

  60 - One Last Day in Paradise

  61 - LALO

  62 - A Father’s Discipline

  63 - Beasts of the Forest

  64 - Relics …

  65 - … and Regrets

  66 - A Quiet Country Village

  67 - Death in Paradise

  68 - Condor

  69 - Smudge Redux

  70 - Leaving the Garden

  71 - A Blast from the Past

  72 - Cleanup

  Andy Maslen

  Keep in touch

  Sample: First Casualty

  1

  God’s Tears

  THE NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL formerly known as Eloise Alice Virginia Payne, and now simply as Child Eloise, stood trembling in front of the older woman. She was naked but for a pair of white cotton briefs and a much-washed, plain white bra, the thin straps frayed at the points they crossed her bony shoulders. They’d given her an extra cup of the sacrament that morning, and now she was blinking rapidly and couldn’t stop clenching her jaw. She was thin, and her skin was so pale the blue of her veins showed clearly down her neck onto her breastbone, and on the insides of her thighs.

  The insides of her forearms were laddered with fine white scars.

  The room in which she was standing was on the top floor of a sand-coloured, terraced house on a crescent flanking London Zoo. It was flooded with pale September sunlight that caught the fine, blonde hairs on Child Eloise’s arms and legs.

  “Will it hurt, Aunt?” she asked.

  The short, silver-haired woman pushed her glasses higher up on her beaky nose, and took the dressmaking pins from between her thin lips to answer.

  “No, child. You will feel God’s breath on you, that is all, just as Père Christophe taught you. Then you will be with the Creator, safe and sound. Now, hold still while I finish your raiment.”

  The young girl stood, trying to be still, but the muscles in her legs quivered in a relentless beat. She tried to imagine what it would be like. A flash of light and heat, and then some sort of awakening in Heaven. Would God actually be there to meet her? What if he was busy? But Père Christophe was clear on this point of doctrine. She was doing His will by serving Père Christophe, and of course He would
be aware of that and would be there, ready to receive her.

  As she shuddered and quivered, frowning with the effort of standing still, her aunt pulled the cotton garment over her head and down her narrow torso. It had no sleeves or collar. It did have a series of ten sagging pockets that circled her chest like something a hunter or a fisherman would have on his jacket, each three inches wide, three deep, and nine from top to bottom.

  With a few deft stitches, her aunt sewed a narrow strip of cotton from front to back between the young woman’s legs, forming a crude leotard.

  “There!” Aunt said, standing back to admire her handiwork. “All finished. Now we just need to fill those pockets and you're ready for your glorification.”

  *

  Three miles away, Harry Barnes was getting ready for another day's sightseeing. He was a trim sixty-three, and he liked to keep in shape playing golf and the odd game of tennis. He had a year-round tan, and he thought it set off his close-set, pale-blue eyes just fine. Since the divorce had come through, he'd been enjoying “every goddamned minute” of his life, as he'd put it to a fellow he'd met the previous night in a pub, over a couple of pints of that weird, flat, British beer. That included this no-expense-spared, two-week vacation to the UK.

  The day looked like it was going to be fine. But Harry was from Reno, Nevada, where he managed a casino, and counted anything below seventy as dangerously chilly. He shrugged on his fawn windbreaker over the sweater, and the tattersall shirt and undershirt he'd already tucked into his grey pants. What did the Brits call them? Trousers? Funny word.

  He sauntered down the short path from his hotel to the street, pausing on the edge of the black-and-white-chequered tiles to admire the park and its trees opposite the hotel. Back where Harry came from, there wasn’t a whole lot of greenery. Bayswater, in contrast, was verdant, and full of other tourists, folks heading to work, even a party of kids, all wearing plum-and-grey school uniforms with matching caps or floppy felt bonnets, like something out of Masterpiece Theatre. They were being led in a crocodile by a pretty young redhead in a lime-green dress with patent leather pumps. She reminded him of his daughter, who’d sided with his ex-wife and currently wasn’t speaking to him.

  No bus in sight, but Harry didn't mind. Linda had been the one who was always in such a hurry. Well, now she'd rushed off with half his money and her skiing instructor, so fuck her. Harry liked waiting. Gave a man time to think.

  *

  Gabriel Wolfe sat at a small, circular, brushed aluminium table outside an Italian café on the northern end of Regent Street. From his vantage point on Biaggi's pocket-handkerchief-sized terrace, he looked south to Oxford Circus, a throbbing crossroads where pedestrians swarmed around the junction, pushed and jostled their way down into the tube station beneath the pavement, or darted across the road in front of hooting taxis and buses groaning with passengers.

  He sipped his flat white, savouring the smooth, strong coffee beneath the foamy milk, and took a mouthful of the delicately lemon-flavoured cake. It had been brought to him a few minutes earlier by the owner, a scrawny old guy who still spoke in a strong Italian accent despite having lived in London, as he told Gabriel, “since the sixties. Swingin’ London an’ all that, innit?”

  The day was bright, and the bite in the air was counterbalanced by the warmth of the sunshine on his face. It was “a real Indian summer,” as his father would have declared it before finishing his tea and toast, folding his newspaper under his arm, ruffling his son’s straight black hair and heading off to his job as a diplomat in Hong Kong.

  Gabriel's three-piece Glen plaid suit in a lightweight grey wool was perfectly suited to the temperature. Today, he’d paired it with a pale lavender shirt, a knitted black silk tie, and a pair of highly polished black brogues. He was on his way to meet a prospective client: the CEO of a firm that offered close protection to foreign celebrities and VIPs visiting London. She wanted help training her operatives, as she called them. Firearms, unarmed combat, defensive driving—bread and butter for Gabriel, and very well-paid bread and butter at that. Early for the meeting, he'd stopped for breakfast on this wide boulevard, only a hundred yards or so from the streaming crowds of London's main east-west thoroughfare, but as quiet as a village high street in comparison.

  With a clatter from its diesel engine, a very high-mileage example to judge from the grey smoke rolling out from its exhaust pipe, a car drew up at the kerb, blocking his view across the street. Nothing fancy. A silver Ford Mondeo, one of millions like it on Britain's roads, with the rear windows blacked out with plastic film. A common-enough modification these days, when every suburban middle-manager wanted to look like a drug dealer. From the rear seat, a young woman got out. Her hair was blonde and cut short, but nothing stylish. In fact, it looked like someone had done it for her at home using kitchen scissors. Her shoulders were hunched inside a black, padded jacket, and the muscles around her pale blue eyes were tight. She kept grimacing as if she had just tasted something unpleasant. Her mouth would stretch wide, then release again. He caught a glimpse of a middle-aged woman ushering her from her seat, gold-framed glasses glinting as a shaft of sunlight penetrated the gloomy interior of the car.

  Without looking back, the young woman shuffled down the street towards Oxford Circus.

  *

  Harry was enjoying himself. He’d caught the 94 bus after ten minutes' wait and was sitting on the top deck chatting with a new friend. Her name was Vivienne Frost. She was a little younger than Harry, fifty-eight or nine, maybe. No wedding ring. She was a looker all right, and Harry told her so after a little idle conversation about the weather.

  “My ex-wife would kill for hair like yours,” he said. “Real natural blonde, none of that peroxide stuff. It kills the shine, and probably the planet too, for all I know.”

  “Quite the Sir Galahad, aren’t you?” Vivienne replied, patting her hair and smiling. Her lips were a pale pink and seemed to shimmer in the light coming through the grimy windows of the bus. Harry was close enough to see the way traces of lipstick had worked their way into thin creases that ran over the edge of her upper lip.

  “Hey, at my age, we call it like we see it. Am I right? Plus, we got taught good manners, which in my book includes complimenting a beautiful woman on her looks.”

  He really hoped he hadn't just overdone it, but Vivienne seemed happy enough with this gentle flirting. Her figure was just what Harry liked, too—round in all the right places, and none of that bony, sucked-in look so many of his ex-wife’s friends paid so much to achieve. “Why wouldn’t a woman want to look like a woman?” Harry had asked Linda one day when they were still talking.

  “Jesus, Harry, you’re such a fucking dinosaur,” had been her baffling reply, leaving Harry none the wiser but one tick closer to hiring a divorce lawyer.

  As the bus lumbered along the start of Oxford Street, they stared down at the tacky tourist shops. Displays of T-shirts emblazoned with union jacks jostled for pavement space with circular racks of sunglasses and displays of miniature red telephone boxes, bearskinned soldiers in sentry boxes, and teddy bears dressed like Yeomen of the Guard. Just in front of them, a bright-yellow metal fitting was vibrating in time with the big diesel engine some ten feet below them. The buzz was loud enough to make Harry have to raise his voice.

  “This could be a bit forward of me,” Harry said, after clearing his throat, “but would you have some time this morning to see a couple of sights with an American on his first trip to the United Kingdom of Great Britain?”

  He held his breath as he waited for Vivienne to answer. She checked her watch. Rolex Oyster Lady-Datejust, a nice model, Harry noted with a professional’s glance. You could tell a lot about a person by their choice of watch. Then she looked at him. And smiled.

  “You know what, Harry? I think I might.”

  Harry smiled right back.

  *

  Something about the young woman had troubled Gabriel. Now, his antennae were flickering and twitchin
g, and a thin blade of fear was lying on its edge inside his stomach. She’d looked anxious, but so did lots of people. She was so tense she couldn't walk easily. Her coltish legs looked uncoordinated, as if she had only learned how to use them a few hours earlier. A job interview? The clothes didn't look right. Black jeans, black quilted jacket. And no makeup, which would have been a good idea, as her eyes were red from crying. She'd looked skinny. The jeans were narrow cut, but her thighs didn't even fill them. Her wrists looked bony, too. Yet her body appeared bulbous, bulky somehow, even allowing for the stuffing of the jacket.

  No, it wasn't the woman herself. It was her ride. After she'd left the car, the driver had executed a rapid U-turn in the street, tyres screeching on full lock as their treads scraped across the tarmac, forcing a taxi to slam its brakes on and the cabbie to curse, loudly and fluently, from his open window. Acrid, blue rubber-smoke had drifted towards Gabriel’s table.

  *

  Child Eloise waited at the bus stop on Oxford Street. She looked behind her at the shop window. It was filled with a display of what she had initially taken to be fruit or perhaps cakes, but which, on closer inspection, turned out to be handmade soaps, things called ‘roulades’ and ‘bath bombs’. Funny name. Her neighbours in the queue were all busy with their phones, swiping, scrolling and tapping. The women wore bright clothes and high-heeled shoes, and they were slathered in makeup. Painted like whores. Sinful. The men ogled the women, peering at their breasts or eyeing their stockinged legs. Lascivious. All seemed more interested in the little slivers of plastic and glass in their hands than in God's creation around them, even if it was mostly concrete and steel here. Decadent.

  Despite her quilted nylon jacket, she couldn't stop shivering. She grunted involuntarily from time to time and her tongue kept poking out between her lips, causing one or two people around her to smirk before looking away. Aunt had told her not to be afraid and had given her a sweetie, “to bring you a little calmness as you do God's work, child”, but she felt frightened all the same.