Читать книгу Final Target - E. Seymour V. - Страница 15

I didn’t return to the hotel. It took me two hours to fight my way through a lockdown of the city centre and bribe a taxi driver to drive with all speed to the airport. He could run as many red lights as he wished.

Lady Luck on my side, I caught the next flight to Bristol. I’d have gladly flown to anywhere in the British Isles. As certain of the intentions of my fellow passengers as I could be, I settled back in my seat, a large gin and tonic to hand, my brain hissing with numerous possibilities.

These were: McCallen had tipped off Mossad; McCallen, through her connections, had unwittingly turned the spotlight on me; McCallen, for reasons best known to her, had me targeted deliberately; Mathilde had been got at, either by Benz or persons unknown, or someone from my past had taken an opportunistic pot shot.

I took a deep drink, savoured the bite of gin at the back of my throat and swallowed. Mossad didn’t stack up for one blindingly good reason. They don’t miss. Added to this, the technique was crass. They’d never take such a risk in a public place, with the possibility of innocent casualties. If they wanted me removed, it would be my body lying in the dirt, thanks to a poisoned hypodermic, or another less high-vis method.

This did not let McCallen off the hook. She’d got me into this imbroglio in the same way she’d entangled Lars Pallenberg. Whether or not she’d deliberately set me up I didn’t know. Trust was in short supply where I came from. My pathological distrust of others had saved my life on more than one occasion. I wanted to believe McCallen for all the obvious reasons, but I couldn’t swear on my heart that she was worthy of it, and I was still angry with her for deceiving me about her relationship with Pallenberg. A guy doesn’t propose to a woman with whom he hasn’t had a close and intimate relationship, especially when he’s ditching the girl he was supposed to marry. Neither does he set her up to be killed, I had to concede.

Unless it was part of a double-cross.

I took another huge gulp of gin. Someone could have seen me with Mathilde, perhaps at the restaurant, and made the connection. The thought of her being threatened clawed at my gut. I supposed it was possible she could have stage-managed my removal, but she’d had little time to make the necessary arrangements and her exact motivation eluded me.

I stared out of the window at the grey light, its impenetrability mirroring the opaque nature of McCallen’s agenda. Unable to break through, I set it aside and, out of professional interest, concentrated on the method of the most recent attempted hit on me.

On the surface, it appeared opportunistic – reckless even – but it could have also been a carefully planned operation, the chaos of the demonstration a cover for cold-blooded murder. Clearly, the killer had estimated his chances and thought he could pull it off. Killing in a crowd wasn’t a method I favoured, the one exception a nightclub hit, but the weapon for me was always a ring-gun. It meant you had to get up close and personal, preferably with your ring finger placed hard against the base of the skull of the intended target. It meant there was no room for error. It meant you did not jeopardise the lives of others. A shot from a gun would never figure as an option, the possibility of hitting the wrong individual – as had happened in Berlin – too great.

Or, at least, that’s what I believed had happened.

In a more relaxed frame of mind, I had to admit that the guy standing next to me could have been the intended victim. Maybe he had a dirty past, links to a criminal network, had failed to pay a debt, crossed someone up … the list was endless.

Who was I kidding?

All roads led back to McCallen. She featured in three of my five possibilities, however outlandish those possibilities were. Whether she was guilty or not, she knew an awful lot more than she had been willing to tell me. As soon as I got back to safety, I intended to find out precisely what that was.

* * *

Customs waved me through without a hitch and I picked up the car and travelled back to the place I now called home. It was dark and I was tired, the perfect set of circumstances to get you slotted. To be on the safe side, I checked before entry and on entry. I double-checked the downstairs basement room that doubled as an office and spare room for stores and laundry, the mid-floor sitting room cum dining room and the kitchen and the upper storey bedrooms, two mid-size, one large enough to imprison an unwelcome guest. Next, I showered, fixed myself something to eat and caught News 24. It emerged that the German national killed in Berlin was a train driver. The Germans were keeping schtum, but the investigation, for obvious reasons, was heading in a political, right wing, nationalist direction. Which suited me. It also suited the killer.

Within minutes, my mobile phone rang. It was McCallen.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Never better.’

‘The guy shot in Berlin –’

‘What of it?’

‘Were you there?’

‘Why would you think that?’

‘Shootings in broad daylight on a Berlin street are rare.’

‘You think I’m responsible?’

‘No,’ she said, steely. ‘I simply thought you might be following up the Benz connection.’

McCallen never ‘simply’ thought anything. ‘Did you now?’

‘Why are you so pissed off?’

‘I was an inch from having a hole blasted through my brain, and it’s your fault that I came here in the first place.’ I wasn’t going to tell her that I was sitting at home on my comfortable leather sofa, feet up, with a beer. If she were as good at her job as I knew her to be, she’d already have checked the airport manifests.

‘You can’t think I set you up.’

‘I can think what I like.’

‘Hex, for God’s sake. Look, where are you exactly?’

‘You think I’m stupid as well as reckless?’

She let her voice drop to a sexy growl. ‘I have never thought you stupid.’

Wise woman. I remained impervious to her flattery.

‘Can we meet?’ she said.

‘I think we should.’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow morning in Cheltenham.’

She was silent a moment, obviously working out how I could so confidently announce that I’d be happy to see her so soon in the UK.

‘The Queen’s, for coffee?’ she said.

One of the oldest and swankiest establishments in town, it overlooked Imperial Gardens and the Promenade and had recently undergone a makeover. Seemed an odd choice to me. She must have picked up on my reluctance. She attempted to persuade me.

‘All spies meet in hotels.’

I visualised her arching a teasing eyebrow. ‘I’m not a spy.’ I didn’t care for the hotel idea. In the serene splendour of the Queen’s, it would be impossible to raise my voice, threaten, get down and dirty or extract the kind of answers I was looking for. I’d probably break fine china. ‘St Mary and Matthew’s church, town centre, ten o’clock.’ Before she could respond, I cut the call and switched off my phone.