The Doomsday Testament (13 page)

Jamie managed a shaky smile of thanks, but by the time he reached the station’s main hallway his head felt as if it belonged to somebody else. Maybe he should have accepted the tea after all? There was a sandwich bar in the foyer, but he wasn’t far from the flat. What he really needed was a seat and some fresh air. He headed for the exit.

‘Wait up!’ She was at his shoulder before he registered that the words were aimed at him.

He stopped and turned towards the voice. The first thing he noticed were the red streaks in her hair that told him she was the girl from the platform. Mid-twenties, dressed in denim and leather, with an attractive face that might fairly be described as elfin, tilted slightly as it looked up at him. On closer inspection she had the kind of skin that shone with a sort of subdued golden light, like the setting sun through thin summer cloud. Eyes a little too wide apart, pencil-thin arched brows and a snub nose that didn’t quite fit with the rest, but somehow added to the charm of the whole. She was frowning and pearly, slightly protruding front teeth nibbled her lower lip. Despite his condition, he found it incredibly sexy. He realized he was staring, but her eyes held his and he was reluctant to break the moment.

‘Can I help you?’ His voice sounded weary in his own ears. He tried to offset it with a smile of encouragement
that
, he decided on reflection, probably made him look like Mr Bean.

‘I thought you were a goner.’ The words contained the slightest American drawl. New York? No. A bit too refined. Something inside his head said Boston, but he didn’t know why. ‘You didn’t look as if you had a chance. I almost fainted.’

‘So did I.’

She smiled and he noticed for the first time the sparkle of a tiny diamond stud at the edge of her left nostril.

‘Sarah Grant.’ She held out a slim hand. ‘At least you’ve kept your sense of humour.’

He took it, surprised at the strength of her grip. ‘Jamie Saintclair.’ When he tried to focus on her eyes the world started to come and go in waves. She said something and the words floated away before he could absorb them.

He shook his head to clear it. ‘Sorry?’

‘I said I wondered why someone would want to kill you.’

‘Excuse me.’ He staggered past her and vomited copiously in the general direction of a nearby waste bin.

‘Feeling better now?’ She had found a park bench in a small, rather unkempt public garden not far from the station, where they sat drinking coffee from over-sized cardboard cups and watching the late-afternoon traffic stream by.

‘Mmmh. Sorry about that. Not the most pleasant way to introduce oneself.’

She
shrugged. ‘You never know when the shock will hit you. You didn’t get much sympathy, though.’ She had the kind of voice he associated with dental nurses, soft and reassuring, with just a hint of welcome authority.

‘No,’ he said, remembering the large and very outraged cleaning lady who had looked as if she was about to brain him with her mop. ‘Why didn’t you tell the police?’

She chewed her lip the way he’d discovered she did when she was thinking. ‘The usual reasons. I didn’t want to get involved. You give a statement and your name goes on a list. You never know when it’s going to come back and bite you on the ass. Then again, what could I tell them? I had an impression of someone in the crowd pushing in your general direction. I couldn’t tell them who did it; in fact, it wasn’t until after they’d taken you away that I realized what I’d seen. Once you disappeared under the train it was as if my brain was encased in concrete. I couldn’t even scream.’

‘I could,’ he said with conviction.

‘A big crowd gathered, but once they found out you were alive they drifted away.’ She stared at him. ‘I think some of them were disappointed.’

Now it was his turn to shrug. ‘It’s human nature. If there’s a disaster, people want to say they were there. Bad news is like a magnet if you’re a certain kind of person. You see a crowd and you join the back of it. You work your way to the front. You don’t know if you’re going to see somebody pull a rabbit from a hat or a man
lying
bleeding on the pavement. You’re disappointed if it’s the magician.’

She nodded. ‘Anyway, I made myself scarce, but I kinda felt an obligation to make sure you were all right.’

‘Why?’

‘You smiled at me.’

He laughed. ‘What makes you think I don’t smile at everyone?’

Her expression stiffened and she moved to get up. ‘If you’re going to make fun of me . . .’

He put a hand on her arm. ‘Please, I didn’t mean anything. You’re the only one who’s given me a thought since it happened and I appreciate that. And you’re . . .’

‘I’m what?’ she demanded.

‘Er . . .’ Christ, thirty years old and he was still acting like a tongue-tied teenager around an attractive woman.

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Yeah?’

‘I appreciate your . . . concern.’

She studied him and he noticed that her hazel eyes had flecks of gold around the pupils and the skin around them crinkled when she grinned. ‘Well, a girl does like to be appreciated.’

He took a deep breath. ‘Look, you don’t even know who I am, apart from the fact that I smile at pretty girls and I have a predilection for jumping in front of trains, neither of which is much of a recommendation.’

‘Pre-dil-ection.’ Her slow drawl stretched the word out on a rack. ‘I like that. All right, Mr Jamie Saintclair, who are you and why would someone want to kill you?’

WALTER BROHM HUDDLED
miserably in his commandeered greatcoat among five hundred other men in a makeshift prisoner of war cage north of Leipzig. He had traded the black and silver of the SS for the uniform of a Wehrmacht private, hoping that such a lowly rank would allow him to slip through the Allied net, or, at worst, secure his early release if he was captured. The fighting had pushed him south into the path of the American Third Army, but that had suited his purposes perfectly. He’d met Americans before the war and knew them for a kindly, quite innocent people who’d believe anything as long as it was accompanied by a convincing smile. How wrong he had been.

His problems had started when his staff car had been strafed by a rocket-firing American fighter.
He
’d only just escaped with his life by diving into a nearby ditch and had watched as the Mercedes was turned into a fireball along with his driver and his carefully hoarded supplies. All he had been left with was his pistol and his briefcase and he’d almost lost that to some cowardly scum of a deserter who thought it must contain food and got a bullet in his guts for his trouble.

After that scare he’d kept off the road, but he soon realized that the stamina that had taken him across the Himalayas in the thirties was long gone. After three days he was a stumbling wreck on the brink of starvation, forced to drink from stagnant pools in the forest. The water had saved him from dying of thirst, but within hours of consuming it he had come down with dysentery. He was finished.

He’d hidden his briefcase and pistol and, nearly shitting himself with sickness and terror, given himself up to an American combat patrol. They had first lived up to his earlier hopes by providing him with food and water and telling him to hand himself in to one of the supply units following them, but it wasn’t long before a staff officer appeared and demanded to know why they ‘hadn’t shot the Nazi bastard’. For a few minutes his fate had been in the balance, but he had cut such a forlorn figure that the officer had eventually relented and put him in a jeep to be taken to the nearest collection centre.

Now
here he was with his arse in a puddle and the rain dripping from his nose. His comrades, who could sense he was no more a landser than a chimpanzee, watched him suspiciously. It was only a matter of time before someone gave him up to the guards.

And it was about to get worse.

He hadn’t realized the screening would be so thorough. This hunger for revenge and determination to ensure the Nazi hierarchy had no possibility of escape seemed very un-American. Every prisoner was being strip-searched and interrogated, regardless of rank. It wouldn’t take the Amis five minutes to find out that he didn’t know a machine gun from a panzerfaust, even if they didn’t find the SS tattoo that verified his blood group. They might very well shoot him on the spot.

Well, if he couldn’t trick his way out he’d buy his way out. The key was to convince them to let him recover the briefcase and, even in his current pitiful state, Walter Brohm was capable of that. It contained only a general summary of his research and findings, but it would be enough to save his neck if he could get it into the right hands. Of course, they would be able to do nothing without the stone and his detailed notes. He would only hand over their whereabouts when he was somewhere much safer than this. He had heard Rhode Island was pleasant at this time of the year.

He
pushed himself to his feet and approached the nearest guard, who eyed him suspiciously and kept the muzzle of his carbine pointed exactly at Brohm’s midriff.

‘I would like to speak to your commanding officer. I have information that will be of considerable interest to his superiors.’

‘
SO YOU HUNT
down pictures and stuff stolen by the Nazis?’ He knew she was trying to sound enthusiastic, but he heard the doubt and he could hardly blame her. It didn’t seem like a very grown-up occupation.

‘It’s not even as exciting as it sounds,’ he apologized. ‘I read catalogues, check out art sales and spend most of my time on the phone. I’m more likely to be looking for a pair of candlesticks than a painting.’

He was usually shy at first with women, but she was deceptively easy to chat to. Maybe it was because she was American; open, talkative, interesting and interested. They discovered they had shared likes: climbing and walking. And pet hates: anyone who wandered around listening to rock music on earphones when they could be listening to the birds singing. Their musical taste differed, but there were areas for negotiation. Sarah liked the new album by Robert Plant and Alison Kraus, although she thought Plant was talented but ancient. Jamie confessed to a secret hankering for old Johnny
Cash
standards and a love of Mahler inherited from his mother. He found himself relaxing and revealing things he hadn’t even told his best friends.

‘Do you think your work could have anything to do with why whoever it was tried to whack you?’

Her words produced a photoflash memory of the train thundering by an inch above his head. All it would have taken was a single hanging wire . . . She noticed his look, and placed a hand on his arm; the warmth injected new life into him and for the first time since leaving the Tube station he felt like facing the world.

‘What are you smiling about?’ He shook his head and she turned a quizzical eye on him. ‘OK.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t mind a man having secrets. Makes him more interesting. But you didn’t answer my question.’

‘About my work?’ She nodded. ‘I doubt it. I’m sort of between jobs at the moment.’

She grinned. ‘Me too.’

‘Hold it,’ he said. ‘I notice all we’ve done is talk about me. Your turn.’

‘OK, but I’m hungry; how about lunch?’

‘I’m sorry, I was certain he was dead.’

Charles Lee tossed the remains of his cigarette from the car window and studied the couple talking together on the bench. He should have done the job himself. His partner had been too impatient – a young man’s flaw; one learned patience as one grew older. He would have shadowed Saintclair and bided his time until he was certain of the outcome. True, the attempt should
have
succeeded, but that wouldn’t be in his report to the agent from Beijing. Better that the younger man was at fault. There would be a little residual fall-out, but he would survive, and that was what mattered.

‘It couldn’t be helped,’ he lied. ‘We know where he lives. We’ll go back tonight and do the job properly.’

‘Ninety per cent of accidents happen at home. Perhaps he’ll drown in the bath?’

Charles Lee didn’t smile. ‘As long as we take care of it this time, no one needs to know.’

The younger man nodded, visibly relieved.

‘What about the girl? Who is she?’

‘She wasn’t with him when he went into the station. Maybe someone he knows who witnessed the . . . accident?’

Lee reached behind him and picked up a black SLR camera from the back seat. The lens appeared normal, the kind any tourist would use for photographing London’s sights, but it had been specifically designed to provide the same results as a much larger telephoto. He homed in on the couple and took a series of shots.

‘Well, we’ll know by tomorrow morning.’ If the girl had a passport or any form of picture identification anywhere in the world, the Bureau’s sophisticated photo identification software would find her.

‘What if she’s there tonight?’

Lee put the car into gear and moved carefully out into the traffic.

‘That would be too bad.’

Ten minutes later the Ford pulled up at a set of lights
by
a row of derelict shops. Beyond the shops stretched a broad empty space where a factory had stood, but which now contained a few burned-out wrecks that had once been automobiles. They had made the journey in silence, Lee allowing his colleague to contemplate his failure and formulating in his mind how to ensure the man from Beijing saw his own part in the best possible light.

‘I thank you for your forbearance and support, comrade,’ his partner said.

‘I’ve told you before, don’t call me comrade. You are in London now.’

The younger man nodded. He looked up as a motorcycle and pillion passenger drew up beside them, noting faded jeans and a fringed leather jacket. ‘If the commander heard how we’d failed . . .’

The helmeted rider turned his head towards the car and an alarm rang in the younger man’s head. He reached for the pistol below his seat. ‘Drive!’ he screamed.

Lee reacted as quickly as any driver could have done. Even the man from Beijing would have been impressed. He was still too slow. His hand had barely touched the gearstick when the pillion passenger calmly raised a silenced Mach 10 machine pistol and kept his finger on the trigger until the bolt clicked on empty. The Mach 10 is an old design, developed by Gordon B. Ingram as far back as 1963, but it is remarkably efficient and remarkably quiet. If someone had been close enough to hear, the only sound they would have registered was that of the thirty-two 9mm hollow-point rounds
thumping
against the interior of the Ford after passing through their victims, and even that was drowned as the motorcyclist revved his engine. For these particular assassins, the hollow point had two advantages over normal jacketed ammunition. When the bullet hit soft tissue it was designed to mushroom, thereby creating extensive damage along a wider path through the body and a significantly larger exit wound. Trapped by their seatbelts the two Chinese agents jerked and shuddered as almost half a pound of metal travelling at a thousand feet per second punched into them and the interior exploded into a charnel house of blood, bone and ragged flesh. The same mushroom phenomenon slowed the velocity of the bullets so that, although they tore up the plastic trim, none pierced the metalwork to leave outward evidence of the hit or inconvenience passers-by. When the bodies stopped twitching the pillion passenger leaned over to place a package inside the Ford. He gave the driver the OK to move off. From the moment they had pulled up beside the car it had taken less than ten seconds.