Contents

DEAD CENTRE

Owen Jones

DEDICATION

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

CONTACT DETAILS

1 SCHEHERAZADE’S BAGHDAD

2 BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA

3 PECKHAM, LONDON

4 GENARO’S FIRST ATTACK

5 THE INTERIM

6 TRAIN ROBBERY, ESSEN

7 MARSEILLE

8 THE NETWORK

9 SLAINTE, BELFAST

10 PETER’S LEGACY

11 THAILAND

12 THE SPURNED LOVER, NEW YORK

13 POLICE ENQUIRIES

14 TERRORIST ATTACK, LONDON

15 THE TALL MAN OF LOS BOLICHES

16 CRAZY DAVE, ST. DAVID’S

17 THE MASTER MARINER, BARRY

18 EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

THE DISALLOWED

Owen Jones

1 MR. LEE’S PREDICAMENT

DEAD CENTRE

Not Every Suicide Bomber is Religious!

by

Owen Jones

Translated by

xxx

Copyright © 2021 Owen Jones

The right of Owen Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. The moral right of the author has been asserted.

In this work of fiction, the characters and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or they are used entirely fictitiously. Some places may exist, but the events are completely fictitious.

Dead Centre

By Owen Jones

Published by

Megan Publishing Services

http://meganthemisconception.com

eBook Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

DEDICATION

This edition is dedicated to my wife, Pranom Jones, for making my life as easy as she can - she does a great job of it.

Karma will repay everyone in just kind.

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

Believe not in anything simply because you have heard it,

Believe not in anything simply because it was spoken and rumoured by many,

Believe not in anything simply because it was found written in your religious texts,

Believe not in anything merely on the authority of teachers and elders,

Believe not in traditions because they have been handed down for generations,

But after observation and analysis, if anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, accept it and live up to it.

Gautama Buddha

––

Great Spirit, whose voice is on the wind, hear me. Let me grow in strength and knowledge.

Make me ever behold the red and purple sunset. May my hands respect the things you have given me.

Teach me the secrets hidden under every leaf and stone, as you have taught people for ages past.

Let me use my strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy – myself.

Let me always come before you with clean hands and an open heart, that as my Earthly span fades like the sunset, my Spirit shall return to you without shame.

(Based on a traditional Sioux prayer)

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

1 Scheherazade’s, Baghdad

2 Birmingham, Alabama

3 Peckham, London

4 Genaro’s First Attack

5 The Interim

6 Train Robbery, Essen

7 Marseille

8 The Network

9 Slaintie, Belfast

10 Peter’s Legacy

11 Thailand

12 The Spurned Lover, New York

13 Police Enquiries

14 Terrorist Attack on London

15 The Tall Man of Los Boliches

16 Crazy Dave, St. David’s

17 The Master Mariner, Barry

18 Epilogue

About the Author

The Disallowed – Chapter One

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I wish to express my thanks to my brother, Rhys Jones, for his helpful advice and suggestions and my author friend, Lord David Prosser for his thoughts on the cover and encouragement.

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1 SCHEHERAZADE’S BAGHDAD

Tony was terrified, but he knew that it was his only option. He also knew that in a few minutes’ time, there would be hundreds far more terrified than he was right now.

He had his schedule and it was memorised to the second. He could even see the big clock on the wall that he had to work to. He watched the seconds tick down and took deep breaths to calm himself, it was not a particularly hot day, but he was perspiring profusely, so he took his handkerchief from his inside jacket pocket and stopped at a mirror to dab at his face.

He was beginning to calm down, the Valium was working. He had not thought that it would be this easy. He had a hundred metres further to walk and fifteen minutes to do it in. He dawdled, looking at the clothes along the way, and wondered, none of it would matter soon, and he wondered whether it ever should have. Shirts, trousers, suits, men’s perfumery… he touched some of them, as you might a flower, then up the escalator to ladies’ wear and along the aisles heading for the jewellery department. He knew the way; he had walked the route dozens of times.

Two minutes to go and he felt his heart pick up speed. Wait a few more seconds, don’t get to close to the display cabinets, he had been told. In fact, he had been given a line not to cross, and lo and behold, there it was a metre before him. He stood on his mark, the point where two sections of the aisle carpet joined, and pretended to be reading an advertisement

Fifteen seconds to go. He looked around himself, a deep sadness in his eyes.

Ten seconds, he caught a sales assistant’s eye and she started to walk towards him, he tried to will her away.

Five seconds, she was speaking to him, but he was not listening.

Four, three, two, one…

Zero.

Boom.

She never heard him say sorry, but then neither she nor Tony existed in this world any longer.

After the deafening explosion, there was complete silence for several seconds and then the screaming started. People were screaming, crying and running for their lives, those who were still able to anyway. There were people and bits of people lying all around and smoke from several fires.

Smoke and cries of agony and smells of fear and Semtex and spatters of Tony and the nice female sales assistant all over the ceiling and clothes and shoppers. The department store’s alarm started and so did the sprinkler system seconds later.

Men in black raced in from the emergency staircase, but they were there to help themselves, not the wounded, and they carried sub-machine guns, not medical bags, not that there was any resistance.

∞

The next day, the newspapers reported that at least thirty people had been killed and one hundred and fifty injured in the suicide bombing of a large department store in the centre of Baghdad.

Nothing more was to be read in the papers or to be seen on television, but the insurance world was abuzz about the jewellery heist from the store and so were the world’s main intelligence agencies.

Ten and a half million dollars worth of goods had been stolen in the confusion and there were no clues as to the perpetrators. They had Tony on CCTV, but he was also dead. They saw that happen too, but then the camera stopped working. They put the losses down to ‘looters, who probably included the security staff and the clean-up personnel’ and left it at that.

It was not unheard of for security and clean-up staff to steal items of value that they found while in the process of carrying out their grisly work. It was a perk and nobody really minded if the wealthy Western insurance companies were defrauded anyway, and if there was a clause against acts of war and terrorism, then some other rich people would foot the bill and that didn’t matter to a bobby on the beat either.

Sympathy was reserved wholly for the dead, the maimed and their relatives, not the store owners.

The two most noticeable things about the suicide bombing of Scheherazade’s department store were the misery that it caused to mostly local people and the overtime it gave them cleaning the place up, making it safe again and reopening it.

The damage it had caused to the shoppers and staff had been horrific, but the actual damage to the building itself had been negligible, because the walls around the jewellery department had recently been clad with slabs of marble and they had stood up well to the blast from the bomb, which had been designed to kill and to maim, but not to cause structural damage.

The six-millimetre-diameter shot that had surrounded the explosives had been heavy enough to wreck people and display cabinets of toughened glass, but not bring down walls or ceilings. However, not many people were aware of that, and neither had Tony been.

The inquiry into the blast began immediately that afternoon when the store’s security staff handed their cameras’ recordings to the police so that they could start trying to track down those responsible.

The surveillance cameras were mounted on very obvious ‘glitter globes’, six on each, hanging from the ceilings at such points around the store that every aspect was covered by a camera. Not all of the cameras were recording all of the time, but each one came ‘on’ for ten seconds before focus was switched to the next camera lens. The globes had been installed and the switching so set up, that almost every location in the store was under observation all of the time, albeit from different angles and from different focal points.

The Federal Police officers ran the recording sequence back from the detonation, so that they had an image of the bomber and then searched for his entry into the store. When they had found him entering the store, it was easy enough to track his movements. Every officer agreed that, in hindsight, it was easy to see that he had something to hide by his demeanour, if not by his clothing. He certainly had not looked ‘padded out’.

Six officers watched the footage on both a large screen and a smaller one, because the large screen produced a pixellated image, although individual frames could be corrected to a large extent by software made for the purpose.

They watched Tony, although they did not know his name, for the almost twenty minutes he was in the department store at normal speed and then they watched the footage in slow motion.

Several times.

They watched, and spent all night watching, the film, over and over again, while scenes of crime forensic experts and other police and army officers inspected the gruesome aftermath.

At daybreak, fourteen hours later, they had to stop, and reluctantly went home for some rest. The night shift took over, but on overtime until the day shift could get back in five hours later. They watched the footage over and over again and made notes, which they could share with their colleagues.

One point that everyone on both shifts agreed on, was that it was obvious that the bomber was nervous and the chief officer of the night shift wrote a memorandum to include parts of the film in a training video for store security staff on how to spot people acting suspiciously. However, for the rest they were stumped.

When the day shift took over again, they sat with a coffee and played the film again in slow motion.

“Sir, stop it there! Rewind it a few seconds, please, now, one frame at a time and get ready to freeze it when I say so,” said a young female Federal Police officer. “I think I saw something… See there? The perp just mopped his brow, and look! There is brown on his handkerchief! It was either very dusty yesterday, or… I think our man is wearing make-up, stage make-up. We, or I at least, have assumed that he is from the Middle East, but now I am not sure. Look, his forehead is a little whiter now… patchy. Go back and play that sequence again, sir, if you please. See what I mean?

“Could he be European?”

They ran and re-ran that part of the footage over and over again.

“Suzette, you might just have something there,” said the commanding officer, Federal Police Captain Ali Allawi, what do you guys think?”

Most agreed, some reluctantly.

“So, our bomber might not be Arab or even from these parts at all. I did notice that he did not shout ‘Allahu Akbar!’ at detonation.”

“Can you give us a clear close-up of his face?”

The female IT expert twiddled some knobs and moved a few virtual sliders in order to enhance the image until it was the best she could produce.

“Sir.”

“Throw it up on both screens and print off a dozen hi-res copies, please.”

The officers inspected the screens and the print-outs in minute detail.

“Can you manipulate this image, Lieutenant? Try removing those heavy eyebrows… and the moustache, and lighten his skin, especially around the eyes. That’s it, a bit paler, north European. Yes…

“Good. Now give him brown hair instead of black, yes, that’s it. He could be European or of European descent, but it’s only a long shot… a very long shot… Has Scenes of Crime found any bits of him that we could use for ID?”

“No, sir, not yet. Not that I am aware of. The blast took out the nearest pod of cameras and the flash from the explosion over-exposed images from other cameras near-by, so we don’t know where any of him flew off to, sir.”

“OK, give someone at forensics a call and check.”

“Sir! Will do right away, sir! When I called fifteen minutes ago they said that there is massive carnage and anything could belong to anyone within twenty metres of the bomber. They said that it is hard to impossible to check for any DNA matches on the walls and the ceiling because of smoke damage. Pollution, sir.”

“All right, lieutenant. Keep in touch with them and let me know the minute anything happens – day or night, on shift or not, understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“OK, guys, for the rest of this shift, we will work on the assumption that the bomber was a white European or American. I will put that in our shift log, but for the time being, it is only speculation, all right? It does not, and I repeat most strongly, it definitely does not, rule out the possibility that he was an Arab terrorist, who committed this atrocity for political or religious motives.

“Who knows what is running through the mind of someone who is on the verge of meeting Allah and taking innocent people with him? Perhaps he just forgot to say ‘Allahu Akbar’. Perhaps he hadn’t seen the need to wash his face that morning, in the circumstances… Do not allow your minds to close off any possibility. I am only saying that for the rest of this shift, we will run with Suzette’s idea that he might be European, or American, let’s say Caucasian, and see where it takes us. There is absolutely no historical evidence relating to Caucasian suicide bombers.

“White people bomb things, yes, and blow other people up, yes, but they don’t normally kill themselves in the process, at least, not on purpose.

“Our man here is on a mission and he is going to die. If he is Caucasian, then we are dealing with a new breed of suicide bomber, a type no-one has ever met before.

“Question. How many Caucasians were at the scene of the crime at the time of the blast? Someone find out.

“Let’s see how many unclaimed teeth we can find, and bits of bone. Get them all off for DNA testing. Let’s see whether we have any unattributable body parts of Caucasian origin.”

“Forensics are not going to be happy about that, sir. It’ll take them weeks, if not months.”

“Who cares what they think. It can’t be helped; we could be on the brink of something new here. A new terrorist organisation or a new splinter group, although I must say that if that is true, why would a Caucasian blow himself up in an Iraqi department store?

“It doesn’t make sense! Christians just don’t do that sort of thing simply to prove a point.

“Has any group claimed responsibility yet?”

“No, sir, nothing at all from any of the usual sources.”

“Have you phoned our sources and asked them?”

“That is being done as we speak, sir, and individual officers are asking their snouts too, but nothing whatsoever… leastwise, not yet.”

∞

The men in black ransacked the jewellery display cabinets, most of which had been damaged in the blast and would not resist even a kick, others were machine gunned. The eight combatants took everything they could find in the eight minutes that they had allowed themselves.

A guard on the stairs landing dropped flash grenades down the stairwell at irregular intervals to deter people from coming up or down and the lifts and escalators were disabled.

They had not had to hurt any more people, but they were prepared to do so, if it were necessary. Since they were only on the second floor, it was not a problem to shoot out one of the large windows and abseil down into the two large open-topped, high-sided trucks that were waiting in the alley below.

The trucks left in opposing directions, so that there was less chance of them both being apprehended. However, they were heavily armed and there were rocket launchers waiting in each vehicle. They got away safely without incident and transferred to non-descript commercial vans with souped-up engines shortly after leaving Scheherazade’s.

All of the attackers, except Tony, were safely in their hide-out – their boss’ villa – within an hour of the atrocity.

“So, Mustapha, everything went according to plan?”

“Yes, sir. We have the merchandise and without conflict of any kind or loss of life on our part.

“Your plan worked totally effectively, sir.”

“Yes, it was foolproof because it was simple. I watched everything up to the point of the explosion from the subject’s camera on that monitor and then I watched your operation from the footage relayed by your helmet camera too. I saw the whole thing. More than you did. The footage from your camera was a bit patchy though, perhaps because of the speed you were operating at, I suppose.”

Mustapha did not want to contradict his powerful boss, so just let it ride.

“Probably, sir,” he said, thinking that that was the least likely cause of the interference, but not knowing for certain what it could have been, unless it was due to the electrical shorting of the overhead surveillance cameras, as he suspected.

“You and your team have done well, Mustapha and I shall not forget it. Please convey my pleasure to your squad and be assured that I have given orders for the usual celebrations after a successful mission. You have all deserved it.”

“Thank you, sir, I shall tell the men.”

“That is all for now, Mustapha, get some rest and then enjoy life.”

“Yes, sir,” Mustapha saluted his boss and left the room.

When he had left, ‘The Boss’ picked up his cell phone and typed in a series of numbers.

“Our team won! Let’s hope that they win the league as well.”

“Good, that is my desire also. When is the next game?”

“I am not certain of the fixture yet, but I think in a few weeks, but it will be an away game… perhaps in your vicinity. Will you be able to put us up if we go?”

“Yes, I think I can arrange that. Just send me the details of when and how many will arrive and it will be taken care of.”

“Good. Then I can assume that you will pass on the good news to our friends?”

“Oh, certainly! Everyone likes to be the bearer of good tidings. I hope to see you soon.”

“You will, I am sure and I hope the same. Goodbye for now.”

∞

“Hello, yes. Are you happy with the results, sir?”

“Yes, everything went perfectly, according to plan. I am most happy with your service.”

“Good, I am happy to hear it. So, I can expect you to fulfil your obligation soon?”

“Yes, it has already been arranged. Your company should receive delivery from mine within thirty minutes. If it does not, please do not hesitate to contact me within the hour and I will sort it out immediately.

“Will the service be available again?”

“Yes, of course.”

“At the same notice?”

“I cannot guarantee anything without more details from you and completion of this contract, naturally.”

“Yes, of course, I understand. Well, I am more that satisfied with your services. Everything has been arranged, so please expect another order from us soon.”

“As you say, so shall it be done. I am glad that you have had satisfaction from our company.”

Then the line went dead and he got onto his secretary immediately to ensure that the payment from Switzerland was indeed being made.

He did not want any cock-ups with this supplier.

∞

A Swiss bank silently moved $1,500,000 one way and $500,000 in another.

∞

“That was another successful operation, Bob.”

“Yes, sir, so it seems.”

“There is no need to still call me ‘sir’, Bob, those days are long gone and I have asked you to call me Gareg numerous times.”

“Yes, sir, you have. Sorry, but old habits die hard. Sorry, sir, Gareg.”

“Jesus, Bob, ‘Sir Gareg’ is even worse!” he said jokingly.

“Yes, er, Gareg, I’ll get used to it one day, I suppose.”

“I hope so. Try to relax a bit more, we’re not in the army any longer and haven’t been for ages. Five for you and ten for me, I think, or not?”

“Yes, s… er, Gareg. I left four years ago and will always be grateful that you looked me up and took me on. I was so worried that I’d end up on the scrapheap, like so many old soldiers.”

“Yes, well, I wasn’t going to let that happen, after all we’ve been through together, was I?”

“Well, sir, I mean, er, Gareg, you have turned my life around and there is no mistake about that. Me and the missus were worried about what I would do when I retired from the forces, but here I am earning three times more with you than before, and I’ve still got my pension. I just wish that poor old Jenny was here to see the benefit. Still, I am indebted to you and always will be.”

“Enough of all that now, let’s open a bottle of scotch to another mission well done or would you rather go into town and sink a few pints?”

“Up to you, sir, either way suits me.”

“OK, let’s have a change and go into town. See who’s about. We can always come back if it’s quiet.”

“Right you are, I’ll bring the car around. The Merc or the Bentley?”

“Oh, I think the Bentley tonight. If we drink too much, you know how much it impresses the police. We may even get lucky, you never know.”

As they left the farm in high spirits, a doctor from Birmingham, Alabama, was trying to get through, but they were on a mission again and didn’t care.

They never did. In their line of business there was no competition and customers always got back to them, because the rate of return on investment was as high as people’s ideas.

∞

The money that had changed hands filtered down as did the compensation for the victims of the blast and the overtime money for the police, builders and hospital staff.

Although there were a lot of people grieving, there was also a large injection of capital into the micro-economies of several local communities both in the Scheherazade department store area and other places around the world.

There were no really poor people killed in the blast, although a lot of the sales assistants were related to poor families, and all the wealthy shoppers, and the workers were insured, as was the owner.

Many people made a lot of money from the atrocity, and insurance premiums were flagged to rise the following year to compensate, but that was never made public either.

2 BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA

“All the required transactions have gone through, sir.”

“Thank you,” he replied and hung up.

∞

The doctor from Birmingham had left two messages several hours apart.

“Dr. A.W. Crow Junior speaking… Ah, it is you, sir. I have a potential participant. Details: max three; point five. Understood?”

“Yes, thank you doctor, your interest will be logged and we will get back to you soon. Bye.”

∞

The third call was from Genaro in Marseille, but it was so important that Gareg did not ring it. He only sent a text message saying ‘Tomorrow’.

“Bob, I have a holiday for you. Can you leave in the next forty-eight hours?”

“I can leave in the next forty-eight minutes, if you want. Where am I going?”

“North America, the USA and Canada. Are your visas still valid?”

“Yes, sir, I never let them expire.”

“All right, good, well, arrange to fly to Birmingham, Alabama as soon as you can and you can take it from there. I have to go on a trip to Europe too, but I’ll give you the details of your contacts before I go. This is the mobile number you can reach me on for the next seven days only.”

Bob took the piece of paper, repeated the number to himself under his breath and remembered it instantly. He handed it back to Gareg. They both walked into the garden via the French doors, stood some distance apart and booked flights to their destinations. Hotels were easy, if they were necessary.

∞

Sergeant Robert Jones, or Bob as he was better known as, was ex-2nd. Battalion, the Parachute Regiment and ex-22 Special Air Service Regiment. He was forty-six, had joined the army at sixteen and was a veteran of many campaigns both at home and abroad. He was a short, squat and broad man at only 5’ 4”, but one of the last people anyone would ever want to meet in the world was mild-mannered Bob Jones, if he were angry with you or even if he just considered you to be ‘in the way’. However, luckily for society, he rarely got angry and he had only ever killed on orders.

Over the twenty-six years he had been in the army, anyway.

There had been a time in Aldershot, shortly after he had signed up, when he was still doing his training, when he hadn’t had the self-discipline that he had now and he had run riot in the town’s bars, picking fights with townies and putting them in hospital just for looking at him, or for the fun of it.

But that was a lifetime ago.

Bob had been Gareg’s right-hand man for twelve years in the army, but they had only started working together again in civilian life a year before, when his wife Jenny, whom he had lived for, had died of cancer.

He counted her the lucky one, because she had been fit and healthy, diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus and died all within three months.

That had been a year ago and it still hurt like hell. Gareg’s business had picked him up at about that time, the lowest point in his life. His one regret was that she had not lived long enough to help him spend the vast sums of money that he was earning now. Not that she had ever been without. He often wondered whether the cancer had come about from drinking too much when he had been away on active service.

He was not stupid enough to think that it was impossible and he knew that he would never love another woman with that intensity again.

They had never had children by choice, so love for Bob these days meant doing his job well and caring for his boss: in other words, job-satisfaction and comradeship, friendship even.

And the odd fling when he was drunk with whichever woman would have him. As it happened, women did not find him unattractive and he did have money, but most of the ones who came after him were too old for his tastes. He still thought of himself as a twenty-year-old paratrooper, not a forty-six-year-old businessman.

He missed Jenny like he would an arm or a leg and always would and worst of all, he knew that there was nothing in this life on Earth that he could do about it and it depressed the hell out of him.

He drove his Range Rover over to Heathrow where he would stay overnight before flying on to the USA.

He didn’t take much: a Saville Row suit that he loved, a couple of handmade shirts, underwear and what he stood up in. He knew that he could buy anything else he needed as and when, and he did like buying souvenir clothes when he went away anyway.

On arrival, Bob just asked a taxi driver to take him to a ‘decent guesthouse’, because he had never been to Birmingham, Alabama before. He checked in, showered, changed and rang reception.

“I am not feeling too well… I’m a diabetic. Could you get me a taxi to take me to Dr. A. W. Crow’s surgery, please? A friend has just recommended him to me.”

“Of course, sir, would you like assistance to come downstairs?”

“No, that won’t be necessary, thank you. I have an early warning system, as I have been ill for many years. If you will phone a taxi right now, I will start making my way down to reception. Thank you.”

“Thank you too, sir.”

On arrival, Bob opened the door to the doctor’s surgery, saw that there were three people waiting and hung onto the doorknob as he walked in. He gasped deeply, nearly fell over and then rested his full weight on the receptionist’s counter.

“I need to see Dr. Crow immediately,” he wheezed. “Diabetic shock, is he in? Dr. Crow? It’s a referral from my doctor in New York.”

Bob held out two cards, one to show that he was a diabetic and the other to prove that he had money. The receptionist looked at him in horror, raced around to put a seat under him and phoned through. Dr. Crow came out immediately and helped Bob into a different room than he had come out of. Once inside, Bob straightened up, shook the surprised doctor’s hand and sat down.

“Hello, doctor, nice to meet you! You have called the agency, DC, twice this week, what do you have for us?”

It took Dr. A. W. Crow Junior quite a few seconds to wise up.

“Er, yes, I’m sorry, but this is the first time that I have ever dealt with anyone from head office, so to speak.”

“No problem. My name is Jim and I have come to talk to the participant. If you will give me the contact details, I will let you get about your business.”

The doctor reactivated his desktop computer, searched for a patient record, had it printed off, and handed it gingerly over to Bob.

“This is all I have to do?”

“Yes, doctor. We will contact the potential participant and if he wants to co-operate, you will be notified. Thank you very much for your assistance. I hope that we will meet again.”

“Yes, thank you, er, Jim. Perhaps, I’d better have some insulin sent in to cover your story.”

“Yes, that would be best.”

Minutes later, Bob was back on the street with an address in his hand. He looked up and down the street, which was fairly affluent, spotted what he was after and crossed the road.

He entered the bar and ordered a beer. Two beers later, he called the bartender over again and showed him the address, but not the name, which he had folded over.

“Is this around here? I just got in from the UK to see my long-lost brother, but I don’t know this city at all. Never been here before.”

“It isn’t far, but ya’d be better off getting a taxi. It’ll cost ya about ten bucks.”

Bob paid his bar bill and went outside to flag down a taxi, which took him to a middle-class suburb. He had the taxi stop fifty yards past the house he wanted and walked back to it.

Once on the drive, he patted his hair down, walked up to the door and rang the bell.

A smartly-dressed, fit-looking, pretty woman answered the door.

“Hello, Madam, is this the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Carter?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Please, Madam?”

“Yes, it is who wants to know?”

“Is your husband at home? My name is Jim Barber. I am from ‘Walker and Walker’, the insurance office associated with where your husband works. There is no problem. In fact, quite the contrary. We think that he may be due a sizable rebate on his insurance premiums. It looks as if he has been paying too much.”

“No, he’s not in yet, but I’m expecting him soon. He usually gets in at about six.”

“I see… I have another call to make at five forty-five… could you give me his cell phone number, so I could speak to him, or could you phone him and hand me over to him? Whatever you like.”

She took her mobile phone out of her pocket and rang it.

“Ron, I got some guy at the front door needs to speak to you. All right, honey?”

She passed the phone to Bob.

“Hello, Mr. Carter. I am from your company’s health insurance scheme… Your doctor, Dr. A. W. Crow Junior gave me your particulars… Could we meet up soon, very soon? It would be in your financial interest. Please ring me right back on my cell phone, do you have a pen handy? 01408, it will redirect to me. Please call in the next ten minutes, if you can. Yes, it is urgent.”

He gave the phone back to Mrs. Carter. She held it to her ear and then clicked it off.

“Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Carter, I have no need to bother you any longer. I’ll be on my way. Good day to you.”

He nodded his head, smiled, turned and walked away. The street was a mile long, but he knew that if he walked east, he would get back into town. About three hundred yards down the road, his mobile phone rang.

“Hello, Jim Barber…” He knew who it was, since only Gareg and one other person in the world had that number.

“Mr. Carter, thank you for getting back to me so soon. Would it be convenient to meet right away? I have something urgent to discuss with you and I have to leave town tomorrow morning. I take it that you are heading home right now… Yes, good. Could you pick me up? I am six or seven hundred yards east of your house. I’m walking. I’ve a pale-blue suit on. What are you driving? A white Prius? All right I’ll be looking out for you in the next few minutes.”

A few moments later a car approached him on the deserted street coming from the city centre. It stopped and the nearest window came down.

“Ah, Mr. Carter, I presume. How nice to make your acquaintance. Jim Barber. Could we go somewhere for a private chat? It needn’t take long. I suggest a quiet bar nearby; I could murder a cold beer. It is so hot, isn’t it?”

Bob got in. The car did a U-turn and headed back into town. Ron Carter activated the hands-free device on the dashboard and called his wife.

“Hello, hon. Yes, I’m with Mr. Barber now. We’re going for a chat but I’ll be home within the hour. Yes, sorry about the meal, but you know the situation and it doesn’t happen often does it? Yes, all right, thanks, hon. See you soon.”

“All right, Mr. Barber, what’s all this about?”

“Please, call me Jim. May I call you Ron? I’ll tell you as soon as we’re sitting comfortably, but I will say this, there is nothing for you to worry about. I am the bearer of good tidings, not bad. I have come to help, not to hinder.”

When they were seated in a booth at the back of a quiet bar with a jug of Trim Tab Rye Brown Ale on the table and two full glasses five minutes later, Bob said,

“Cheers, Ron,” and held up his glass to clink it with Ron’s.

“Cheers,” he replied, “I’m all ears.”

“I have heard about your condition. I’m sorry, I know that will come as a surprise to you. I understand that you spoke to one of our agents recently regarding a solution.”

“I’m rather confused. I don’t mean to be obtuse, but what is this all about. Which agent and what condition?”

“You have terminal prostate cancer and I have a way for you to leave your wife a wealthy widow. Does that jog any memories?”

“How do you know about that?”

“This is fantastic beer. As I said, you spoke to one of our people the other evening. In a bar, perhaps even this one, I thought the bar tender recognised you. Are you happy to talk here or would you rather go somewhere else?”

“No, that is not a problem. This is as good a place as any.”

“Yes, none better in my experience, let me top you up. Would you like a chaser to go with that?”

“Why not?”

Bob raised a hand and the waiter was there in an instant. He ordered two shots of Wild Turkey.

“I assume you remember the bare details.”

“Why don’t you make your pitch, Jim, and we’ll take it from there.”

“OK, Ron, whichever way you want to play it. I know that you told one of our people that you were interested in making some big money quickly, because you and your family are in the financial bog and you don’t have much time to sort it out.”

“And who told you that?”

“A man you met one day, had a few drinks with and poured your heart out to. Like I said, probably in here.”

Ron stopped and thought. It had been a fortnight ago that he had heard from Dr. Crow that he had a virulent form of prostate cancer and that he had no more than three months left to live, but he hadn’t told his wife and he couldn’t remember much about the evening in question. He remembered talking to several strangers and having a good time. In fact, he had got quite drunk, which was unusual for him these days.

The agent had been set to stalk Ron and sound him out. It was part of the company’s routine procedure, so that there would be no link back to the original informant, the doctor himself.

“I’m sorry, Ron, but I cannot reveal to you how I know. Does it matter very much?”

“No, not at all. Just idle curiosity.”

“Do you remember what you said to our operative?”

“Sort of.”

“Are you still interested?”

“Yes.”

“OK. Cheers!”

∞

Gareg flew into Marseille Provence Airport and took a taxi to a large villa near Les Calanques de Cassis. The security guards did not allow the taxi to enter the gates, so Gareg paid the driver off and showed the guards his credentials, and then a drop-top Rolls Royce Camargue took him the quarter of a mile to the main house.

Genaro was waiting for him on the verandah outside the front portico.

“How good of you to come over again and how nice to see you,” he said in a flawless English accent.

“It is good to be here again and see you too,” said Gareg, meaning it. “Whoever said that it was bad to combine business with pleasure was neither a businessman nor a hedonist!”

“Oh, I agree with you one hundred percent, my dear fellow.” He stood up to shake hands with and hug Gareg, then he snapped his fingers and a butler wheeled over a trolley with two glasses and a bottle of Bollinger in a bucket of ice on it.

“Would you like to freshen up, Gareg?”

“I would love a shower and a quick dip in that marvellous pool of yours, Genaro, if that’s all right.”

“Why of course, old boy.” Genaro spoke into a handset and a golf cart appeared to take them around to the back of the house.

“Your things have been taken to your room, but we have plenty of trunks for you to use in the changing room over there. Do you remember where it is?”

“Oh, yes. How could I forget? There was a certain Monique in there the last time I was here…”

“Ah, yes, Monique, such a charming girl, but alas, she is no longer with us. We had to let her go, but we have others, if that is your pleasure.”

“Perhaps later. I just want to get some of this grime off me and cool down for a while. Another glass of champers wouldn’t go amiss though.”

Genaro indicated and it was done.

After Gareg had swum a few lengths in the Olympic-sized swimming pool, he again sat with his host.

“That was wonderful, my friend, I do envy you your lifestyle.”

“You could have the same, I suspect, but you choose your own way, as I have chosen mine. Shall we eat something?”

“Yes, that would be most welcome.”

“Do you have a preference? I can get chef to rustle just about anything up for you.”

“No, you know me. I’ll eat what the locals eat.”

“I’m not sure that I would, but I appreciate the sentiment.”

He spoke into the handset again.

“Ten minutes. I cheated. I remembered how easy-going you are and your penchant for seafood, so chef was already preparing something. They’ll bring it out here.”

“Yes, I love seafood, cheers!”

They knew everything about one another but pretended not to. They were both wealthy men, although Genaro was more used to the lifestyle than Gareg, who was ‘new money’ since he had made most of his since leaving the army, although that did not matter to Genaro, who only cared about money, not how old it was or where it had come from.

Genaro was a third generation mafia Capo di Tutti Capi in the area, whose great-grandfather had moved to Marseille from Sicily in the aftermath of the First World War. Their family still had land and farms on the island and Genaro often went there for a visit in his private plane, which he kept at the airport.

His mafia family controlled the area around Marseille and he lived as well as any royalty or head of state. He was married and Gareg had met his wife once, but she spent most of her time in Sicily and they had three children who were always away at boarding school in the UK when Gareg had visited.

“So, Genaro, what is the plot this time?”

“Well, my friend, I have had these plans drawn up for you.” He took a folder out of a locked drawer under the table top. “Shall we run through them now and you can give me your first impressions. Iron out any wrinkles, as you say.”

“Yes, all right, that’s a good idea.” Gareg moved over to sit next to his friend who was unfolding an A1-sized sheet of paper.

“We’ll have a look at these first and then we’ll have some fun and you can roll the details around in your head, while you roll Yvette around in your bed.” Genaro laughed out loud and slapped Gareg on the back.

“Sounds like a decent plan already, Genaro.”

∞

When they met up again a few days later, it was as if they were long-lost brothers, which was always the case. Gareg shook hands with Bob and then hugged him, a hug which was heartily reciprocated.

“How did your trip go, Bob?” asked Gareg, when they were sitting comfortably with a Laphraoig on the porch of Gareg’s farm where Bob had spent most of his time since Jenny had passed away. Gareg was happy for him to stay there too, as he otherwise lived alone.

“It was a total success, Gareg. I met three potentials and one who was probably just too flaky.

“Yes, well I’ll go with you on your decision on that score, Bob. You have put everything in your report, I’m sure.”

“Yes, it is all here,” he said sliding across the blue folder that lay on the table between them.

“Thank you. I’ll get all that typed up and entered into the database. When will training begin for our newbies?”

“I think in about a fortnight’s time. I am pretty sure that we will have three more recruits register by Monday, but you know how it is.”

“Ye, you never really know until they actually turn up, do you? And how about the two we have in training now?”

“Oh, they are committed, si… We will not have a problem with them. I am as sure of them as I can be. Do we have an opportunity for them yet?”

“I think we may, for one of them at least.”

∞

“Sir, we have isolated some Caucasian material and according to the footage, there were only two whites on the floor at the time of the explosion.

“One of them is still alive and the other got a piece of shrapnel through the head, but both bodies were intact. This means that we have parts of a Caucasian that cannot be accounted for, unless…”

“Unless he is our bomber… A Caucasian suicide bomber… Do we know anything about him?”

“No, sir, not really, but we are still searching. He is definitely a male; of about forty-five years of age and of European or American, as you say, Caucasian, origin. DNA supports all of this, but obviously, it cannot tell us why.”

“Yes, thank you sergeant, I do realise that DNA cannot tell us why, although I darn wish it could. Why would a Caucasian want to blow himself up in a foreign country?”

“Perhaps he had converted to Islam, sir. Many do.”

“It is a possibility, sergeant, and the most likely explanation at the moment. Any other suggestions?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“So, we have to work with the theory of a fanatical Caucasian convert to Islam. Who would know about converts?”

“Imams, sir.”

“Imams, yes, they would, wouldn’t they? Get in touch with someone in the government, I don’t know who and ask them if they can email all the Imams here and abroad that have reported a white male convert and find out if that guy has disappeared in the last few days or even weeks.”

“I’m on to it, sir,” volunteered one of the team.

“It’s a very long shot. There might be thousands of them. Anyway, it’s all we’ve got, so we have to run with that. We have a middle-aged, white Caucasian man, who converted to Islam recently – or not so recently - and became so fanatical that he blew himself up, but forgot to shout ‘Allahu Akbar’.

“It doesn’t feel right somehow and it doesn’t make it any the easier for us at all.”

Captain Allawi looked up at the hugely enlarged photo of the bomber taken seconds before he died for the umpteenth thousand time and muttered the words

“Who are you and why did you do it?”

3 PECKHAM, LONDON

Mrs. Angelica Smith was in her kitchen in Peckham, south-east London, doing the washing up, when she heard the flap of the letterbox bang shut. The post had already been delivered that morning, so she assumed that it was junk advertising. However, when she finished the breakfast things, she dried her hands on a tea towel and put the kettle on. Then she spooned some instant coffee into a mug and went to the front door to see which special offer she had been blessed with.

There was only one envelope in the wire basket that was used to catch incoming mail.

The typed envelope simply had ‘Mrs. Angelica Smith’ and ‘Delivered by Hand’ on the front of it. She assumed that it was a new advertising ploy trying to make it look more personal, but she was curious enough to open it anyway and it was a welcome distraction from the other worries that she had. It contained a single typed sheet and a sealed, folded envelope.

She heard the kettle switch itself off, so she put the letter and envelopes into the pocket in her apron and went into the kitchen, poured boiling water into her coffee mug and took it into the lounge, where she took out the letter and read it.

Dear Mrs. Smith,

This letter has been hand-delivered to your door by one of our operatives. He will not reveal himself to you nor contact you again.

Do not worry, this is not a threat and no trouble will ensue. No-one is in any danger, but please sit down before you read the enclosed letter, because it will change your life.

A Well-Wisher.

She took a sip of coffee and smiled to herself, those people at Readers Digest would try anything to get you to open their mail. She felt the red envelope, there was a key in there, so they hadn’t changed that much then, she thought. She opened it anyway to see how much money she was on the verge of winning this time. The letter had been written by hand.

My Dearest Angie,

As you know, my dear, I have been ill with cancer, but what you do not know is that it is a particularly virulent form.

You think, my dearest, that I am in a clinic in Switzerland undergoing treatment, well, that was partly true, but I joined a special programme to help test a new drug.

If the drug didn’t kill me, I only had a few weeks left anyway. I chose the drugs, and, since you are reading this letter, they didn’t work.

My reward for trying the drugs is $500,000. You will find jewellery with a re-sale value to this amount in a safety deposit box in your name at our bank in the high street. The key will open the box and the password to get you access to it is the name of our dog and the name of the budgie, followed by the result of subtracting your full date of birth from mine. Every other letter, starting with the second one is capitalised.

I apologise for not being able to let you in on the secret before, but please enjoy your future and be assured that I am waiting for you.

If you attempt to verify what I have told you, the government will deny all knowledge and the police, not knowing any better, may impound the jewellery pending an inquiry, which may last years. However, I assure you that the jewels were purchased legitimately and that the bills of sale that accompany them are genuine.

You may take them back to the shop where they were bought for verification by all means and if they honour their promise, you will even be able to get a refund for the next seven days.

Please do not grieve for me, my love, I would have been dead soon anyway and in this way I felt no pain, I assure you. You may check the details of my illness with our GP, if you like, of course.

I assure you once again that the jewels are above board, but you cannot go to the police or government. That is just the way they operate, everything else can be checked, but why bother?

One last thing, I had to sign my body over to research as a condition of the deal, so you will not get my remains or ever know where they are. I will be ‘missing presumed dead’.

I suppose you had better tell the police that I have disappeared. The staff here have assured me that I will be buried with my wedding ring.

Your Ever-loving husband,

Tony

XXX”

Angelica held the letter to her breast and burst into tears. She didn’t normally drink anything stronger than wine, but she went over to the cabinet, took out a bottle of Amaretto and poured a large amount into the remains of her coffee.

What a way to find out you’ve become a widow, she thought.

∞

Bob flew back to Birmingham, Alabama, to tie up a few loose ends. He met Ron again, but in a different bar, one of Bob’s own choice, the name of which he did not disclose until the last moment and even then he waited in a doorway across the street to make sure that Ron was not being followed either voluntarily or involuntarily. When he was sure that everything was safe, he went inside.

“OK, Ron, you’ve had a fortnight to think about it. Are you still up for it?”

“Yes, Jim, what happens now.

“First we get a jug of that beer, Trim Tab Rye Brown Ale, if they’ve got any, so that we are not disturbed and then we talk.”

He called the waiter over and placed the order. When they had a full glass each, Bob started again.

“You are terminally ill, but not yet incapacitated, correct?”

“Correct. The level of pain is increasing, but I can still function and I have about two months left to live.”

“Due to the nature of our business, I cannot tell you everything until I am sure that you are in. Do you understand?”

“Sort of…”

“OK, I work for a covert branch of NATO. I am British by nationality, but NATO is international in nature, as I am sure you already know.”

Ron was nodding.

“Not to put too fine a point on it, my job is to recruit people for suicide missions. The people who work for my department as ‘special agents’ do not survive. Ever.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes, they all die, but in what cause?”

“I cannot tell you that and to be perfectly honest with you, I don’t always know myself either. My job is to recruit.

“Now, not many people want this kind of dead end job, as I am sure you can imagine, but if you are terminally ill anyway…”

“Yes, I see your point, but why should I choose to die for you and not in bed at home or in hospital?”

“Three reasons spring to mind. First, you will leave your family well provided for; second, you will not die in pain, guaranteed, and third, you will be furthering the interests of your country and its allies.”

“OK, how much does my family get and how do I know that I can trust you?”

“Two good questions. Your family will get at least $500,000, but possibly more. It depends on the mission, not the result, because you will die and painlessly, but whether the government achieves its aims or not, your family will be paid.

“As to my credentials, I am afraid that you will have to take me on trust. If you try to validate my existence or that of the department that I represent, you will face a brick wall of silence both in your country and in mine. No-one will admit to my existence, and it has to remain so. One more thing, neither your body nor your effects will be available to your family for burial and you will not know the purpose of your mission, or not usually anyway.

“After your demise, we will deliver a letter to your wife, or whomever you choose, written by yourself, in which you can say anything you like.”

“If I agree, when do I pass the point of no return and how is the money paid to my wife?”

“First the money. It will be paid as you like, but we advise against cash. Jewellery or bearer bonds are best. We will leave them in a security box in a bank of your choice along with full purchase documents. Nobody will be able to dispute that they legally belong to the recipient of your choice.

“The point of no return is when your exact mission is revealed to you, which is usually about three days before you have to complete it. Your part will be easy, not physically demanding, but it will result in your death and probably that of others too.

“Do you have a moral objection?”

“I’m not sure, I suppose it depends on who else dies.”

“You have to say ‘no’, categorically, ‘no’, because these missions are covert and dangerous and there is always collateral damage. Make no mistake about it, innocent civilians will die, but hopefully not too many. It is something that the department builds into its strategy.”

“I see. Will I die in America?”

“I cannot say, because I do not know.. You have not been allocated a mission yet and won’t be until you have been on a basic training course.”

“What does that involve? It’s not as if I can run for miles or complete an assault course, you know?”

“The course is not one of those types, but you may be taught how to defend yourself, or how to put off those who may try to detain you. I cannot tell you anymore at this moment except to say that if you agree tonight, because I have to leave tomorrow morning, I will enter you into the programme and you will then receive brief instructions within about two weeks which you must follow to the letter.

“It will involve you being away for about two weeks, so you tell your family and employers what you like and you will be contacted when it is over. You will be dead within six weeks having suffered no pain and you will leave your family a considerable tax-free lump sum to boot.”

“Let’s have another jug and a whisky, Jim.”

∞

A few days later, Ron received a text message telling him to fly to Nevada, buy a car with SatNav and drive to a specific map reference. Ron said goodbye to his boss and colleagues and took two weeks holiday. He told his wife that he had to go away on a training course, but he allowed her to assume that it was to do with his job.

When he arrived at the heavily fortified compound, he was stopped and asked for his credentials. The only ones he had been given were ‘Dead Centre’, but as soon as he spoke them he was admitted and afforded every hospitality that was available.

Hospitality basically meant free board, free food, free drink and free women. ‘Dead Centre’ picked up the bill and was a very good customer.

It seemed to Ron that the camp had various training programmes. The one he was on was the least physically demanding and taught him how to use a pistol and a knife and how to disable an opponent by a simple chop to the Adam’s Apple and how to distract him by spitting in his mouth when he was talking.

It also taught calming yoga breathing techniques, so that he could control any nervousness when he was on his mission.

Nobody’s identity was revealed at the camp and there was no indoctrination, but Ron got the impression that most of the guys were members of right-wing organisations and were there to learn combat techniques. It was not run by the government or NATO, as far as he could work out. ‘Dead Centre’ was only his password, as no-one else he had spoken to seemed to have heard of it.

Ron actually had a great time at the camp.

He fired thousand of rounds, slept with at least one different woman every day and ate like a lord. And why not? he thought, he would probably be dead within a month. He fantasised that he was like a Roman gladiator, who knew that his luck could not hold out for much longer.

He was preparing to die. He trusted Jim, although he did not believe that that was his real name, but he did believe that he worked for NATO like he had said he did and he was proud to be helping his country and its allies, like his grandfather had in the Second World War.

The way he saw it, he could either die in hospital pumped full of painkillers, watching the faces of his family and friends pitying him, or he could die like a man, provide well for his family, and help his country.

He could go out with a bang, he thought macabrely.

For a man like Ron, it was a no-brainer. He was fifty-nine years old and had done two tours of national service in Vietnam. He loved his country and had no qualms about laying down his life for it, like he had risked doing when he was nineteen, although this time he would be paid well for his sacrifice, or at least his wife would be and that was good enough.

What was the point in dying in hospital and helping no-one, when he could die a hero and help a lot of people?

Ron was in.

∞

After another call from Genaro, Gareg was back at his villa.

“So, Genaro, what can I do for you? Changed your mind?”

“No, it is not that, my friend, I may have another job for you and I want to firm up the other job.”

Genaro and Gareg went back a long way, but they were from completely different backgrounds. Genaro had been born into a wealthy, violent south European family, whereas Gareg had been born on a sheep farm near St. David’s in West Wales.

Their paths had crossed because of their military careers. Gareg had joined the 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment and moved into the SAS and Genaro had done three years in the French regular army before joining the Foreign Legion until his father wanted him to join the family businesses.

Those businesses included dozens of legitimate shops and dealerships on the south coast in the vicinity of Marseille, but also a network of drug dealers in thousands of brothels and bars all over southern France.

They were also into more serious organised crime such as bank robberies, hijacks, insurance fraud, money laundering and kidnapping. It was this section of the business that Genaro was hoping to expand with Gareg’s agency, ‘Dead Centre’.

They had known each other for twenty-five years since their paths had crossed during a joint venture between the SAS and the Foreign Legion in Rwanda. It had not always been easy to keep in touch in those days, but since they had both ‘retired’ and the advent of mobile telecommunications and the Internet, they were now in regular contact.

Both men were aware of their abilities and those of the other and knew that they were evenly matched, very dangerous men. Neither was sure who would win if they ever found themselves on opposing sides. Although both men imagined the scenario from time to time, neither of them could see it happening in reality. They both had a deep like for each other which was born of respect, but knew also that if push came to shove they would kill the other, but only if they really had to.

After all, business was business.

“I need an operative, Gareg, one of your special kind, for a plan that I have in mind. We have never used your services before, although we have that other little matter to finalise… Still, I have no doubt about your ability to do what you promise. Do you have a second person for me?”

“What exactly does the second venture involve?”

“I have a folder for you with the details, as before, but let us just say for now that it will involve extreme disruption and the loss of the operative’s life.”

“I see. Yes, I’m sure that we can help you there.”

“When, where and how much? I have tried to give you plenty of time, but I am restricted by events myself. It will take place in thirty days time in Germany. And money? How much are you charging, my friend?”

“Mmm, well, I am not in possession of all the facts, of course, but it is harder to get the equipment into Germany, they are so well organised, but, let’s say $1.5 million at such short notice, Genaro.”

“Your services are expensive, my friend, but I trust your reliability and that costs, so I agree. Perhaps I will get a discount on my third purchase for being such a good customer.”

“Perhaps.”

They clinked glasses and both knew that that was all that was needed to clinch the deal. Genaro handed Gareg the folder.

“So, this is a second operation? You have the first one set for an unspecified time, place and date, but in the near future and in this area and you are willing for the participant to stay with you in your home until the time is right and then you will have another operation in thirty days in Essen?”

“That is correct. Is there a problem?”

“No, not at all. We have the participants and we have the necessary equipment. In fact, the participants are undergoing training as we speak. When do you want the one participant to move in with you?”

“Let’s not put it like that, Gareg. He can have one of the guest houses in the garden and a girl to keep him company. We shall try to make sure that his final days are as comfortable as possible.”

“Yes, I am sure you will, Genaro, it is very generous of you and I am sure that he will appreciate it. So, when do you want him?”

“Anytime you like, as soon as you like. Will you tell him anything or do I have to brief him in any way.”

“No, you don’t need to do anything. You don’t even need to tell him your real name, although when he leaves here it will only be to die, so he won’t be able to tell anyone anyway. It is better, on the whole, if you keep your relationship simply on a personal level. I will introduce you to him as a friend who is willing to put him up until his mission comes up, as a personal favour to me. He doesn’t even need to know that you are his ultimate employer.”

“Good! That suits me fine. In that case, send him over or bring him over as soon as you like. And the other one?”

“We will have him in Essen at least two days beforehand, probably three, and at the rendezvous, an hour before the ETA of the subject as you requested in your excellently-detailed plans.”

“Thank you. We aim to please.”

“So do we. ‘Dead Centre’! and they both laughed.

“I will go back tomorrow, Genaro, but I will return with your lodger in five days. Is that convenient?”

“Yes, Gareg, perfectly.

“George,” he turned to the butler, “tell the girls that they may join us now, tell the chef that he may serve dinner and let the entertainment commence.”

“Yes, sir. I will attend to it at once.”

∞

“Bob, are you still in America?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I am with a client now and he will need two participants. One ASAP and the other in sixteen days. Can we manage that?”

“Yes, Gareg, what are the locations?”

“Both in Europe, why? Will you have a problem with visas or passports?”

“No, that is not a problem. There are no problems. I will check on the participants and the equipment today and text you yay or nay, but I cannot foresee a problem. Everything is in place. If you had said four, it may have been different, but two is no problem at all.”

“You will hear from me within the hour.”

“Good man. Bye for now.”

∞

“Thanks for coming, Ron. I have just had a call from my section leader. If you want, we have a mission for you right away or you can leave it if you prefer.”

“Where is it?”

“In Europe. France.”

“I have a passport but no visa, is that likely to be a problem?”

“No, not if you don’t have a criminal record.”

“I’ll get onto it tomorrow.”

“Good, shout up some more beer and whisky, Ron, while I just let my superior have the news.” He took out his mobile and sent a text – ‘Everything in place’.

∞

Bob and Ron flew back to the UK together two days later. Bob picked up his Range Rover from Heathrow car park and drove them to Cardiff, where he installed Ron in the ‘Marriot’ on the old Hays Market Place. He gave him £500 and drove on to Gareg’s farm just outside St. David’s in south-west Wales.

“The participant for Marseille is in the Marriot in Cardiff and the other is in his home in Manchester awaiting instructions. The equipment is ready; it just requires final assembly and shipping, of course.”

“Well done. You had better make sure the equipment gets where it’s going right away. We will need one package in Marseille in three days and one in Essen in ten days. The exact details are in here.” He handed Bob an envelope. “Do you have people prepared to drive the packages over?”

“Yes, Gareg, that will not be difficult.”

“Do we know anyone in Essen?”

“No, but that is not a problem. The driver will stay in a hotel with the package until we take delivery of it.”

“Yes, that is perfectly satisfactory. You had better get onto that right away then. Send the one package to Genaro’s.”

“Yes, Gareg. I know the place. I wondered if he was involved when you said Marseille. Will you be taking the participant over yourself?”

“Yes, I’ll drive over to Cardiff tomorrow and pick him up. We’ll be in Marseille late afternoon. See if you can get the package there within forty-eight hours after that.”

“Yes, Gareg. That should not be a problem.”

“Good. When you have taken care of your end of things, come over and join us”

“Very good, sir, er, Gareg. Old habits, eh?”

∞

Gareg left on the ninety-minute drive to Cardiff at seven a.m. the following morning, picked Ron up at reception, and drove to Heathrow Airport, 120 miles further down the M4 motorway. They boarded the early-afternoon flight to Marseille Provence airport and were picked up by one of Genaro’s men in a limousine at five p.m. local time.

Ron had been suitably impressed when Gareg had picked him up in a Bentley, and the men had gotten on well, but when the chauffeur-driven, classic, drophead, convertible Rolls Royce Camargue took them along the coast to Genaro’s villa, he had never imagined that such luxury existed. It was a long way from his job as a shipping clerk and his three-up, two-down in suburban Birmingham, Alabama.

4 GENARO’S FIRST ATTACK

Genaro welcomed Ron with an out-stretched hand.

“Hello, my dear Mr. Carter, I am so glad you could come to stay in our home. My good friend Gareg has told me so much about you. Call me Genaro, and treat my home as your own. Would you like to freshen up first or have a drink?”

“Hello, Genaro. What a beautiful home you have here. I have truly never seen anything like it. You are so kind to let me stay here. Please, call me Ron.”

“Thank you, Ron. What is it to be: a drink or a shower?”

“Oh, my apologies, a drink. Something ice cold.”

“Champagne, beer, cocktail, scotch on the rocks, water, lemonade, fruit juice, you name it.”

Ron looked at Gareg for help.

“Have whatever you like, Ron, Genaro means it.”

“In that case, champagne, please, Genaro, I don’t see much of that in my daily life… from one year to the next, in fact.”

George, the butler, brought around a tray of champagne flutes.

“To the three of us – Happy Days!” toasted Genaro, and seeing that Ron was nervous, he finished his glass in one, put it back on the tray and took another.

“Happy Days!” repeated the other two and took their cue from their host, downing their glasses in one and taking another.

“Please, sit down, make yourselves comfortable or would you like to go around the back and sit by the pool?”

“The pool sounds good,” said Gareg and maybe you could have a few of your lovelies do a bit of sunbathing for us. Eye-candy, you know.”

“Excellent idea. George.”

“Sir.”

The golf cart took them around the back, just as six beautiful girls were arriving. They took their tops off and arranged themselves on sun beds around the pool. Ron was mesmerised.

“These are some friends of mine, who are also staying here. It is quite normal here in the South of France to sunbathe topless. Not so in America, eh, Ron? Does it offend you? I can ask them to dress again, if you prefer.”

“Er, no, Genaro, we don’t have anything like this back in the States, leastways not where I live, but I am not offended. When in Rome… Live and learn… I’ll get used to it, I hope.”

Genaro flashed a smile at Gareg over Ron’s shoulder, but Ron did not notice. His attention was elsewhere.

“Gareg, why don’t you take our friend to choose a pair of trunks, he’ll be more relaxed, then we’ll go for a swim and meet the girls. Would you like that, Ron?”

“That would be wonderful.”

“Come this way, Ronny, my man,” said Gareg.

They all met up at the poolside a few minutes later and Genaro introduced them to the girls.

“Ladies, could you help my friends with their suntan lotion, they are not from this country and may burn. Gentlemen, which of my lovelies would you like to assist you?”

Ron and Gareg made their choices and then lay down to have the cream applied. Genaro did not need suntan lotion after a lifetime in the Mediterranean and in the tropics. He had a heavily tanned, fairly hairy body, as a lot of men from the area have.

After a couple of hours in the sun and the water, and a bottle of champagne to himself, Ron left for his chalet accompanied by his new friend and they weren’t seen again until dinner.

Genaro and Gareg discussed some new developments in the plans for the near future.

“My sources inform me that the target will be making a rare sortie out of his villa on Monday afternoon. He has been summoned to sign an affidavit at the central police station. It will present a good chance of success, don’t you think?”

“What, blowing up the central police station when it’s full of coppers? I think that would cost you a lot of friends in high places.”

“No, I wasn’t actually thinking about inside, but when he slows down in his car to enter the police car park.”

“That sounds a lot better. Could we go and reconnoitre in the morning?”

“Certainly, although it is Saturday tomorrow and the pattern of traffic will not be the same as on Monday. It will be lighter.”

“That’s all right, if it looks good with lighter traffic it will be even easier with heavy. Give me a shout when you are ready to go and I’ll be ready. What time, nine o’clock?”

“That will put us there for ten, which is about right. Let’s ring Wee Willie Winkie and see if he’s ready to join us.”

When Ron came out with Tina, he looked worse than he had when he went in. He looked as if he had drunk the chalet bar dry and not got a wink of sleep. Tina still looked immaculate though, in a full-length, midnight blue evening dress which had been slashed and cut away to reveal so much of her body that it was a wonder of engineering how it stayed on her. Ron was wearing an open-necked Hawaiian shirt with long white slacks, which he had probably worn in the American Virgin Islands the last time he had vacationed there.

Genaro and Gareg both wore white slacks and a short-sleeved shirt, one white and the other pale blue. Dinner, a four-course affair and entertainment, a local singer of some renown lasted until midnight when everyone was quite happy to go to bed.

In the morning, Genaro, heavily disguised, Gareg and three armed guards got into an old, dirty car with local licence plates and drove into the city centre. They drove past the building on both sides of the road several times. They noted the entrance to the outside car park, where the target vehicle would have to slow down to negotiate the sharp right turn, assuming that they would be on the right-hand side of the road so as to avoid having to cross over a lane of heavy traffic.

Entrance to the car park was guarded by two sentries, who checked for permits and a crash-barrier of the counter-weighted scaffold-pole type. It was hoped that the car would not get that far anyway.

They took dozens of photos with small cameras that were disguised in pens. Then four of the men got out, leaving the fifth to park nearby and walked up one side of the road pretending to look in shop windows and back down the other side to the waiting car. They had all the information they needed, now they just needed some luck and not even very much of that.

Back in Genaro’s, the two men collated all the footage onto a computer and then manipulated it so that it was more useful. They made a detailed map, with actual photos of some buildings and then printed off A2, A3 and A4 sized copies. They were the only ones who knew the plan and had to keep it that way until the last moment. Ron would have to be told earlier and so would Bob, but none of Genaro’s men.

There were spies everywhere in Genaro’s world.

When Bob arrived on the Saturday afternoon, Gareg and Genaro explained the plan and sought his opinion. Bob had one small addition by way of a safety feature which was approved immediately.

When the plan was as firm as it was ever going to be, Bob asked for the use of a car and driver for a couple of hours and left for the city. He had something to take care of. Genaro went to sort out some other business and Gareg went to look for Ron, who was last seen by the pool.

“Ron I wonder if I could have a word, please?”

Ron got up and followed Gareg a few paces, he had the sinking feeling in his heart that his luxury holiday was going to come to an end very soon.

“What is it, Gareg?”

“We have a mission for you and it takes place on Monday.”

“I see. I knew this would not last for long. Amazing isn’t it, the difference between people’s lives? Genaro has all this and in forty-eight hours, I will have nothing.

“Don’t get me wrong, I am not jealous and I am not trying to back out of our deal. It is just that I thought that places like this only existed in films. What does Genaro do to get all this money, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I don’t know exactly, I shouldn’t think he does either. His family has been wealthy for a long time and they have their fingers in many pies. I think there were probably great opportunities to make big money after the First and Second World Wars. Some questions you don’t ask, even of good friends, you know.”

“I guess so. When are you going to tell me the details?”

“Tomorrow is soon enough, I think. It is not a difficult role to play, although the outcome for you is guaranteed. You understand that?”

“Yes, Gareg, you and Bob have always been completely up-front on that score.”

“Bob and I were, are, both soldiers and we both understand the need for honesty among comrades. We have told you all we can.”

“I appreciate that, Gareg and thank you for including me in that.”

“You are a comrade, a brother-in-arms and you are prepared to face your death like a man and I honour you for that. It is what all soldiers hope that they will be able to do, when their time comes to make the ultimate sacrifice.”

“You know, I was in the army, a lifetime ago, as they say…”

“Yes, Marines, wasn’t it? Vietnam? Bob told me something.”

“Yes, 1st Battalion the 4th US Marine Corps, I did my two years and then I got out. I didn’t like it.”

“You and Bob were or are career professionals in the British Army?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so. You can always tell, can’t you. I don’t think I would have signed up for this if it hadn’t been for Bob’s professional, military attitude, bearing… I felt I could trust him. You are the same, but if you don’t mind me saying so, I’d put you down for an officer and Bob as an NCO.”

“Yes, pretty good.”

“Have a good night on the tiles, Ron, because once we tell you the plans we will not be able to allow you to mix with any of the girls again. Genaro won’t ask you any questions and Bob and I already know the mission, so we will be the only ones you will be allowed to talk to after breakfast tomorrow. OK, Ron?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Good, well, you go and enjoy yourself and we’ll see you at dinner. However, if you are otherwise engaged, don’t worry, we’ll catch up at breakfast. See you later.”

“Bye, Gareg,” and he went back to the champagne and the girls at the pool.

∞

After breakfast, Gareg, Bob and Ron went into a spare bedroom which they had been offered for the purpose. Gareg ran through the plan quickly and then once again slowly. It was simplicity itself and Ron had no questions.

“I can’t think of anything that is not clear, but perhaps something will occur to me later.”

“If it does, we are not going anywhere, so just ask. Likewise, if you want to run through the plan again, just call one or both of us. We are at your disposal for the next twenty-four hours for anything, to do with the mission or not.”

“And the payment?”

“You have already indicated your preference to Bob, have you not? You chose gold and diamonds to be given to your wife to the value of $500,000 and you saw them being deposited in her local branch, or not?”

“Yes, that is correct. When will she receive them though?”

“Oh, it only takes a few days. She should receive notification on Wednesday or Thursday. Have you written your farewell letter to her?”

“No, but I will write it tonight and give it to you or Bob in the morning. I saw that there was stationery in the chalet.”

Bob and Ron spent most of the afternoon drinking beer and telling stories in the garden. The girls were not there to be looked at. Gareg and Genaro stopped by for a beer from time to time and the afternoon passed quickly and in a convivial way. Ron went to his chalet to shower an hour before dinner. He also started his final letter, but he did not want to finish it until a short time before he left the villa.

He thought it would sound more personal, as if it came from the heart, then.

Dinner was not at all morbid and Ron actually said, ‘We who are about to die salute you’ and saluted everyone, forgetting that as far as he knew, Genaro was not in on the plot. Genaro forgot to play his part as well and saluted Ron back.

The four of them went to bed alone at midnight more than a little the worse for wear and slept well, even Ron.

It was fair to say that all four men had some kind of headache when the woke up the following day, but nothing that a couple of paracetamol tablets could not sort out. Breakfast was at seven and was followed by a final rundown of the plan, at which Genaro was not present.

Ron was shown and given a fitting of the suicide vest for the first time and he was glad of it, because it’s awesome power scared the hell out of him. He had imagined suicide jackets to be big and bulky, but this one was not.

Bob explained as he showed it to Ron.

“Each jacket is specially made, not so much for size, but for purpose, so each one differs slightly. Typical suicide bombers wear explosives packed all around their body for maximum, 360° damage. However, we will attempt to project all of your blast forwards, so that you are in effect like the mouth of a cannon. Anything in front of your chest will feel most of the force of the explosion.

“Having said that, objects behind you will also suffer damage as your upper body disintegrates in a flash, resulting in your guaranteed, instant demise, as promised.

“You will not feel a thing.

“Try it out for size, but we have never had a problem before”

“Over my shirt?”

“Yes, put it on over your shirt, as you would a waistcoat. As you can see, it looks like something a jazz musician might wear – that sort of style and there are no external signs that it is anything other than that. The explosive has been sewn into the lining and concentrated here and here to give you a paunch and man-breasts. You will just look a stone or two over weight and that looks quite normal these days.

“The trigger is not hand-held, since we find that security staff, or the well-trained ones anyway, look out for them, or hands in the pockets. Our devices are triggered by tugging at the top button on the waistcoat. That will complete the electrical circuit which will fire the detonator and explode the device. Have no fear, it all takes less than a few nanoseconds, so you will not feel the detonator.

“The whole device is powered by a nine volt PP9 battery, which is inserted into the top pocket of the waistcoat. It goes in here.

“Once it has been inserted, it may not be removed, or it will detonate immediately. There are one or two other hi-tech features which help to guarantee the success of the mission, but I am not at liberty to discuss those with you. One thing that I will tell you though, is that once this jacket is armed, you cannot survive. This is to make it not worth your while changing your mind at the last moment.

“Suffice it to say that if I were to insert this battery into the holder in this pocket, it would seal your fate. However, your fate has already been sealed by God and, as I have told you before, the point of no return is when your mission has been revealed to you. It has, so you have passed it now, and so you are already ‘a dead man walking’, as they say.

“It is imperative that you get as close to the car as possible and if you can stand near an open window, so much the better, because the car will be armoured and have bullet-proof glass. The driver will have to show the security guard some credentials, this will be the best time to strike. Other methods have been tried but without success. You are our last hope.”

“Can you tell me who ‘he’ is?”

“I shouldn’t,” said Gareg, “but I can’t see the harm. He is a top NATO general, a Frenchman, who has been making overtures to China. We cannot allow his knowledge to fall into their hands, so we have to eliminate him.”

“I see, so this is pretty damn important then? Thanks for sharing that with me. It makes my conscience feel a lot easier if… you know, there is collateral damage.”

“Yes, we understand your concerns, but if you attack at this point, as the vehicle approaches the barrier and the driver lowers his window to show his pass, there will only be the two security guards behind you and brick walls either side of the gate, which you will not damage. You are likely to kill the general and his aides, who are in on the defection anyway and you may kill or just injure the security guards, so collateral damage of possibly two, which is regrettable, but acceptable.

“Don’t you agree, Ron, rockets and bombs dropped in wartime kill far more innocent civilians, don’t they? You may kill two, but not for certain.

“Have you written your letter for your wife?”

“Yes, here.”

“Good. She will get it. I promise,” and Bob put his hand on his heart and meant it.

∞

At nine o’clock, one of Genaro’s drivers drove Gareg, Bob and Ron to within a hundred yards of where the hit would take place.

“How do you feel, Ron?” asked Bob.

“Conspicuous, but all right. I don’t normally wear flashy waistcoats and a long wig like this”

“No, maybe not, but take my word for it, it does not look out of place here and it does actually suit you. Anyway, you need the wig to cover the earpiece.”

“Take this, Ron,” said Bob slipping something into one of Ron’s trouser pockets.

“What is it?”

“A Derringer, you never know. And take this too.”

“What’s that?

“It’s a concoction of drugs that will stiffen your resolve, shall we say.”

“Like Angel Dust? I haven’t done any of that since the Seventies in ‘Nam.”

“It isn’t Angel Dust, but will have the same sort of effect. It’ll settle your nerves, reduce the sweating and palpitations and banish fear.”

“It is a funny thing, but I am not afraid.”

They got out of the car and it drove away.

“OK, Ron, you’re looking good, said Bob. “Don’t forget what’s in your pocket, but don’t approach them with your hand in your pockets either. The general’s men are good and they may become suspicious. Go up and ask them the time or something.

“I will have to go now, Ron, but Gareg will keep you informed about the whereabouts of their car, so concentrate on his voice, but don’t try to talk back, you can’t, you don’t have a mike and it will look suspicious if you are seen talking when there’s no-one with you. Goodbye, Ron, it has been a pleasure to know you.”

“Go get ‘em and go with God, brother!” said Gareg.

They shook hands with Ron and a tear formed in his eye.

Bob pushed the PP9 battery into its holder in Ron’s top pocket.

Ron looked him in the eye and knew that he was a dead man for certain now. Gareg slapped him on the shoulder and they walked away.

Fifty yards further, Bob turned to look over his shoulder.

“He’s crossing the road, waiting for a clearing in the traffic on the island, as planned. In here, sir.”

Bob nodded at the old lady at the desk, said ‘Bonjour, madame’, and they both took the stairs two at a time. Once in the room that he had rented the day before, he locked the door and withdrew the case from under the bed, while Gareg opened the window. Bob assembled the L115A3 sniper rifle in seconds and set it on its tripod on the table that he had put in place the day before. It was well back into the room in the shadows.

He watched Ron through the sights. Ron is in position, Gareg, presumably awaiting contact with us. Gareg could see him quite plainly a hundred and fifty yards away. He scanned the traffic and said, “That’s it, Ron, you’re doing fine. Walk to the gates of the car park and then on for fifty yards against the flow of traffic.”

Ron stopped outside the gate and looked around and then walked on.

“That’s it, Ron, nice and easy, slowly does it. Don’t go too far, because if the target comes from the other direction you will be out of position. That’s it stay there, admire the architecture. I think I can see the target approaching. You are in the perfect spot… Move to the inside of the pavement and walk towards the car park again… slowly. Don’t turn around, I’ll be your eyes.

“The target is twenty-five yards behind you and approaching slowly, walk a little faster, fifteen yards… it is alongside you now. That’s it, let it pass you, you want it to be about five yards ahead of you when it crosses the pavement and the guard approaches it. There it goes…

“Look annoyed that it has cut you up, the window is going down, now forward to speak to the driver and now!”

There was an almighty explosion and they watched the car fill with fire, just before it flipped over and over up the street away from them and then the petrol tank exploded too.

∞

“Well, that went as well as could be expected,” said Gareg closing the window but not completely. “Come on, Bob, let’s get out of here. Put the rifle back under the bed, Genaro’s men can pick it up later.”

Bob opened the room’s door and they hurried downstairs. The old lady was not at her post, she and everyone else in the vicinity were on the street wondering what the hell was going on. It made it easy for Gareg and Bob to slip away to one of Genaro’s cars that was waiting not three hundred yards away. They got in and the car departed at the normal speed of the traffic.

They made a short tour of the city just to check that no-one was following them and then returned to Genaro’s villa.

Genaro was waiting for them on the verandah with champagne on ice, and grilled lobsters, barbecued prawns and salad.

“Congratulations, gentlemen, on a very successful mission excellently carried out. I saw everything up to the point of the explosion on CCTV, but I heard that there were no survivors on the local TV and radio.

“It seems that there were five in the car, your man, Ron, and the security guard were killed. The other guard was slightly injured and so were a dozen or so others by the car as it rolled down the boulevard and then exploded again.

“I’m free of that bloody thorn for ever, although they are sure to suspect me of having organised it, but there is no evidence linking me to it. Anyway, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, if I ever have to.

“Eat, drink and be merry, gentlemen.”

They clinked glasses and downed them in one.

“I’m glad you are satisfied with our work, Genaro,” said Gareg. “We’ll party tonight, and fly home tomorrow to start on your next job.”

5 THE INTERIM

Bob was Gareg’s right-hand man, but it meant that he was always busy, which he preferred anyway, since it gave him less free time to mope about Jenny. He had a week to prepare the next operation, which was also for Genaro, but someone had to go to Birmingham, Alabama to sort out Ron’s widow. He was tempted to get someone else to do it, but he wasn’t that sort of person. He could use some of his men, his ‘subcontractors’, as he called them, to take some of the workload off him at home.

The vest for Essen had already been made and the constituent parts were ready to be shipped at a moment’s notice. Richard, the participant, was ready, had done his training and only needed briefing and priming. Gareg, Bob and Genaro had worked out how to achieve their part of the mission, but theirs was only a small part of the whole job, although without success on their part, the rest of the mission could not proceed.

Bob would go to America and be back in plenty of time to take care of the rest of his business.

“Payment from Marseille has just come through, Bob, are you going to Alabama yourself or sending someone in your place?”

“I’ll go myself, if you have nothing pressing for me to do here. I like to wrap up everything myself, if I can. I did promise Ron too. You know how it is.”

“Yes, I know. It is what keeps you human in this line of business. You have to care about your men and keep your promises to them.”

“You have always done that too, Gareg. I learned it from you.”

“Thank you, my friend. Ours is a lonely job with only money and the satisfaction of a job well done to console us. At least in the army, we had superior officers to tell us that we had done a good job and that we were doing the right thing. It made it easier.

“There is a difference, I know. In those days we were working for the good of our country, whereas now we are working for the good of ourselves, but the outcome was often the same. A lot of bad guys made a lot of money from our operations and a lot of innocent people got killed.

“We just wiped out Genaro’s main mafia competitor and four of his top adjutants, and one totally innocent security guard died as well. In Africa we’d take out a dictator that our government didn’t like, so that another, more sympathetic one to us, could take over and fleece the country instead.

“We didn’t know whether it was just or not, we just did what we were told. Sometimes I can’t see the difference, you know, Bob. We are just freelancers, mercenaries, if you like, and we make some widows rich along the way. That has to be a good thing and the guys die feeling proud, thinking that they are helping their country. They die heroes in their own minds, and that has to be a good thing too, doesn’t it?

“So what is the difference between helping Genaro or Bokassa or Idi Amin or all the other stinking dictators we’ve worked for in the name of the British Government?”

“Why don’t we open a bottle of single malt, sir? I think we could do with a few shots.”

“Good idea, you know where it is, Bob.”

∞

Bob hired a car at the airport and drove to the Carter household, posted the envelope into the letter box and drove off.

He flew back to the UK the following day, satisfied that he had fulfilled his last promise to Ron.

∞

The Iraqi captain of the Federal Police in Baghdad had asked to be kept informed of all suicide bombings, especially those that were in any way unusual. The Scheherazade bombing was beginning to drift onto a back burner, because of all the other violence in the capital and that annoyed him to the point, where he could not concentrate on any other case properly.

News of a suicide bombing in Marseille reached his desk. Suicide bombings in Europe were still unusual, but this one too seemed to have no real motive, unless it was a mafia killing, but then that method had never been proven to have been used for that purpose before.

There was some footage from the security cameras outside the police station and it was being prepared to run on his equipment at that very moment.

Captain Allawi could hardly wait.

When the file arrived on DVD, he and his old team were watching the Scheherazade footage again. The technician put the disc in the drive and started it up. They watched the compiled footage of several cameras up to the point of the explosion and then watched it again from where Ron first made an appearance, concentrating on the bomber. They froze the sequence and studied the bomber. This time he was not trying to look Arabic or anything else, he was clearly Caucasian.

The bomber moved in and out of the sweep of the cameras, but he was clearly visible for the last minute or so before the explosion. He appeared to be walking back to the police station when a car blocked his path, as it attempted to gain access to the car park. He bent down to remonstrate with the driver, or so it appeared, and he exploded. It seemed that there were two possible explanations. First that it was a hit on a known mafia boss and second that it was a failed strike on the police station, because of a malfunction. Perhaps the timer had gone off early, caused by bending down to shout at the driver for obstructing him.

Most sources went with the first option. The covering documents accompanying the DVD noted that the person most likely to benefit from the man’s death was one Genaro Vicari, the head of the mafia in Marseille, but there was no evidence and he had not been questioned.

“Any questions or observations?” asked the captain.

There was silence.

“OK, I’ll start the ball rolling. Here, the bomber comes into view for the first time. He is crossing the road. He walks over to the gates and then walks off to the right. Then he turns around and seems to quicken his pace as the car behind him catches him up, but he doesn’t look, so is this coincidental or…?”

“He has an accomplice or accomplices unknown feeding him with information through an earpiece.”

“Which is why he has long hair, to hide it…”

“Good! That might be what is happening here, which would support the mafia hit theory, but it does not tell us who our bomber is or who is controlling him.

“The most likely is his arch-rival, this, er, Genaro. Do we have any information on him?”

“I can log onto Interpol, sir.”

“Yes, you do that, lieutenant.”

“So, that leaves us with two Caucasian suicide bombers, who tried to hide their identity through disguise. However, these guys are shortly going to be atomised, so why bother?”

“To protect someone else, sir?”

“To protect someone else… that seems to be the most likely, but whom?”

“A fanatical religious sect?”

“That seems the least likely…”

“A political organisation?

“Possibly, but it doesn’t seem to gel, does it? They normally claim responsibility.”

“The mafia or another criminal organisation, sir?”

“That is the most likely, it seems to me,” said Captain Allawi. “An organised criminal network, known or as yet unknown to us…

“This is something new, I can feel it in my bones.”

∞

Mrs. Carter retrieved the letter from her husband in the late afternoon when she returned from a shopping expedition with one of her girlfriends. She read the letters at the kitchen table after making coffee for them both.

“Oh, I do love these advertising competitions,” she told her friend, then she went silent, screamed and fainted.

Her friend laid her out on the kitchen floor, phoned an ambulance and then read the letters. She did not know what to make of them, but it was obvious that her friend had taken them very seriously indeed, and she did recognise the handwriting.

Mrs Carter had already come around by the time the paramedics arrived, but they checked that she was OK, got her to sign a release and left.

∞

Captain Pierre Ursine of the Marseille National Police was also looking at the footage of the bombing. He had never had to deal with a suicide bombing before, although he was well-versed with the internecine wars between the various mafia families in the area. They were pretty much his bread and butter, but he could have done without this, he was thinking. He wished that the mafia would just have one big battle and all kill each other. He was sick of them all.

He too had come to the conclusion that the bomber was not operating alone. It not only had to be assumed that an expert had put the suicide vest together for the bomber, but he had also noticed that the bomber was pretty near perfectly co-ordinated with the approach of the car that he blew up. There was no doubt in his mind that the bomber had achieved his goal of killing Vicari’s main rival.

There was no other logical conclusion. He studied the man’s face in close up, pixellated though it was. He enhanced the image, but one could never be quite sure with enhancement, whether the software enhanced pixels in the right way or not. The software was just making ‘educated guesses’ based upon the colour of the pixels next to the ones being enhanced. It was not perfect, but it was the best available, so it was always worth a try. It was possible that the enhancement might reveal something.

He concentrated on the bomber’s shoulder-length hair over the ears as it moved slightly when he walked, but it did not reveal an earpiece. He studied the man’s mouth, but it hardly moved. It was inconceivable that he was talking back to his controller if he had one. The cameras were not meant to be trained on the shops and apartments across the road, but one camera did include the lower two floors in its sweep, but it was worthless. There were a few open windows, but then that was normal in hot weather and the windows did not have to be open for someone to see what was going on.

The bomber’s face was not known to Captain Ursine, but then he knew that so much could be done with masks or even make-up, that that was nothing to go by anyway. He froze the clearest frame of the face, downloaded it and told the technician to circulate it to all the usual channels.

As he read through the documentation accompanying the DVD, he noticed a memorandum that a copy of the DVD had been sent to a Captain Allawi in Baghdad, because he had issued a blanket request for information on unusual suicide bombings in Europe and all those worldwide that involved a Caucasian suicide bomber.

He had heard of the Scheherazade Department Store bombing, it was his business to have heard about it, but he had not taken a professional interest in it.

Captain Ursine had had limited relations with the Baghdad police force when he was seconded there for six months five years before, but he could not remember a Captain Allawi. Not that that meant anything either, since Allawi was a common name in Iraq and this man could have been promoted recently or moved into Baghdad from the provinces.

He decided to ring him up and introduce himself. He may even learn something from the exchange, he thought, but at least he would find out why the Iraqi captain wanted to know about Caucasian suicide bombers. He picked up the phone, dialled through to the switchboard and asked to be put through to the captain in Baghdad.

The connection was made thirty minutes later. They spoke in French.

“Hello, Captain Allawi, my name is Captain Ursine, your counterpart in Marseille. How do you do?”

“Hello, Captain Ursine. Nice to meet you. I am well and you? I take it you are phoning about the suicide bombings. I am looking at your footage with great interest because of its possible relevance to the Scheherazade case. Have you heard of that one?”

“I’m fine. Yes, I have heard of it, but I do not know any details.”

“Well, our suicide bomber was made to look Arabic, but we are pretty sure that he was Caucasian, which would have made him unique in the