Wings of the Morning (47 page)

They arrived on a Friday evening, and joined the back of a long queue for immigration and customs, but it was at least a better ordered process now as a garrulous fellow traveller told them. He
had been visiting Nigeria since the early oil boom years and entertained them with stories of getting through Murtala Mohammed Airport and on up north to Ibadan. Finally, they emerged from the
airport building to find a cab and a slow drive to their hotel.

The traffic was no less intense the following morning as they were driven to Victoria Island. It took a further forty-five minutes before they found their destination and stood in the humid heat
of midday as Carradine paid off their cab. Old Josh sniffed the air, the scent of Africa redolent with his memories of long gone days. They were in a cul-de-sac: at its end stood high steel gates,
topped by rolls of razor wire. To the right of the gates was a substantial house on three floors, the windows and door on the ground floor shuttered, grilled and barred. They walked up to the
gates. A personal entrance was set into one side. It bore no sign and there was neither handle nor bell in sight.

Rory gave the door a shove. It hardly moved, but they could hear it rattle against the locks which held it solid from the inside. Fergus glanced up and pointed out a CCTV camera mounted high on
the corner of the house which would have seen them walk down the street. Rory turned to see an impressive figure. The black man approaching them was a colossus. Two metres in height and wide to
match, he was moving with a sinuous motion which said he would also be quick on his feet, despite the huge boots. He had a baseball cap on the great head and Ray Ban glasses hid his eyes. He walked
up and stood towering over them.

Josh Trollope took over. ‘You must be Jonah,’ he said, sticking out his right hand.

The black man didn’t utter, but he shuffled one vast boot in front of the other and then they could all hear the pedestrian door in the gate behind them being unlocked. Through it stepped
another black figure, trim and muscled, well dressed in collar and tie, neither hat nor glasses, a close crop of grey hair, mature, experienced, confident. He stepped up to Josh.

‘Trollope,’ he said, ‘of Grenadier Guards.’

‘Patrick Nugumu. Maiduguri Frontier Force.’

Josh spoke the words as he held out his hand, but Patrick brushed it aside and swept the Englishman into a great hug of greeting. It was many years since they had first met in the bush, when
Josh had rescued Patrick from certain death. Rory and Fergus looked on in contentment, while Jonah continued with an impassive stare from his great height. They stayed in the compound on Victoria
Island for three days. There was history to cover and plans to lay. Patrick insisted on moving his visitors from their hotel onto the top floor of his house. He lived with his family on the second
and the ground level was devoted to his business.

Patrick Nugumu had been living here for fifteen years, and a further twelve before then at a variety of addresses in greater Lagos, since he had struggled into the city two years after the
Biafra War. He had tried a number of jobs before putting his military training to best use by joining the army of private security guards which sprang up during the boom years of the seventies and
eighties. Even after that frenzy had subsided and the focus had switched to the new federal capital of Abuja, there was good business for Sentinel Security which Patrick had founded and built up on
his own. Along the way, he had married his Delphine, an illegal immigrant from Cameroun, and she had borne him three sons in quick succession. Then there was Jonah. Delphine had found him abandoned
on a rubbish tip and they had given him a second shot at life. He was still only nineteen and had never stopped growing since they had taken him in. He was a gentle giant until roused in defence of
his family and their home. He was also mute, having never spoken a word in his life.

Following their brief action together in Gabon, Josh and Patrick had clung to a spasmodic contact for eighteen months, but neither was a man of letters and then the civil war had put Patrick
completely out of contact. It was not until after Josh was widowed that loneliness drove him to discover the possibilities of the computer age. He traced Patrick through his old regimental
association and they started to communicate again.

That renewed contact led to the recruitment of Patrick and Sons to the team of Zero. Fergus found Patrick quick, intuitive and professional. He was over ten years younger than Josh and he
relished the challenge of Zero.

‘Delphine and I both have been refugees of a sort all our lives, Suh,’ he remarked to Carradine, refusing to address him by any other name or title, ‘we both like the notion of
a new start. My boys feel the same, but there’s big Jonah too and he won’t leave my side. ‘

‘That’s good,’ Fergus smiled at him, ‘and from our side there will be Rory and two more. Plus someone who’s got pretty special skills,’ he said with a wink to
Rory and his father.

‘OK,’ Patrick beamed back at him, ‘and do I get let in on this secret and what the guy does?’

Fergus was gathering papers together as he replied.

‘Actually Patrick, it’s not a guy but a girl. Her name is Verity Blades and she’s the best explosives ‘man’ I’ve ever found. She’s a Kiwi and I first
met her when I was serving in Timor. She and Rory will travel in together as a couple, which makes for good disguise.’

Plus, hopefully, it makes for a future thought Josh to himself, as Rory had spoken much about this girl on the plane out from London.

They finished their planning. It was arranged that Rory and team would fly into Target as eco-tourists, arriving in the first week of December. Patrick and family would close the Sentinel
business at the end of August and travel in by road, taking time to establish some safe houses in the capital. Patrick had a final question for Josh.

‘Will you be coming in with the ships?’

‘No, I won’t. I’m too old, Patrick. I’ll be more hindrance than help, but I’ll be down a bit later when the dust has settled.’

The two old comrades gazed into each other’s eyes, each knowing there was no more to be said.

THIERRY CESTAC — July 1999

Ginger McCabe was found dead in the first week of the month. His body was discovered in a corner end seat of a carriage on the Circle line of the London underground. It was
early morning before peak hour when a fellow traveller thought that something about him looked wrong and pulled the emergency handle. There was a short report in the Evening Standard which said
that the transport police were trying to establish where and when he had joined the train but made plain that this was a murder enquiry. A long, thin knife was still embedded in his chest and the
blood loss had spoiled Ginger’s favourite waistcoat.

The Mansion House PR Agency picked up the news item and passed it to human resources who informed Felix Maas. Felix was startled and distressed: he had liked Ginger and admired his ability. He
had lived a rackety sort of life, but would never have hurt a fly and didn’t deserve to go out this way. Perhaps it had been yet another love affair, this one gone badly wrong. Before
dismissing the sad news from his hectic work schedule, Felix rang his boss. David was more brusque: these things do happen, plus it was now months since McCabe had left their employ and there had
been no adverse comments from Bastion on his subsequent activities. They were now inside their final six months before Zero. They were flat out with no time for distractions and the subject was
closed: but only for a few days.

It was mid-morning on a Wednesday when Felix took the call on his personal land line, a number available to only a very few. The voice and name were unknown to him, but he was chilled by a
reference code which was quoted with familiarity. The code identified a summary file in one of his Zero Programs. Absolutely no one on the planet should have access to this information, but the
voice spelt it out with perfect accuracy. It did not wait for a reaction which Felix would have been unable to articulate. The voice said that it required a meeting in The Mansion House that
Saturday morning at 11 am precisely when terms would be laid down. Attempts at counter action between then and now would result in exposure of Plan Zero to the world media. ‘Click’ as
the line was cut.

Felix felt he had been hit by a bus. He drank half a pint of black coffee laced with whisky and smoked two cigarettes as he clung to his discipline and wrote a note of all he had heard. Then he
took the staircase three at a time to barge into David Heaven’s office. David listened as he made his own scribble. He made Felix go over it all again. He kept calm as his innards churned
over. He focussed his concentration. The threat was for a purpose. Someone out there wanted something in exchange for silence: a bargain, therefore, a trade, a bribe. Well OK, he could handle that.
Not for nothing had he been dealing in Africa for thirty years. But how had it come to this?

David and Felix looked at each other and said simultaneously ‘Ginger McCabe.’

Felix went on to say, ‘It must have been Ginger. I should’ve worried more when I first suspected him. He’s the only one I know who would have half the ability to crack my
systems. And that was when he was working here. But the stuff I was hearing back is recent: it’s current. It includes work from only last month. Which means that Ginger was hacking into me
for all that time since he dumped us: right up to his’...

‘Death.’ David finished it as he thought furiously. The somebody somewhere had sent their message with murder, which could only mean that Ginger had become expendable. They already
knew the lot: no need for further spying. They knew the plan, the destination, the timing. They had killed the messenger to make a chilling point and for all his knowledge of dark deeds in Africa
in the past, David realised that he was now out of his depth.

‘Felix,’ he said with all the confidence he could muster, ‘this is tragic, serious and dangerous. We need help and I know where to start. What you’ve got to do is to get
back to work. That’s tough but necessary. There’s so much still to do and I’m not having us thrown off course now. I’ll handle it urgently and I’ll keep you posted,
but you have to keep it quiet and leave it to me. Be here on Saturday in case I need you. Agreed?’

‘Yes David. OK.’ Felix looked relieved, as David expected, although the fear was still naked in his eyes. David sympathised. As Felix made for the door, he stopped him.

‘The voice, Felix, you say you were speaking English but what about the accent? Foreign? European? What?’

Felix shook his head. ‘No. The language was fluent but the guy was French, from down south somewhere I’d guess, and he seemed to have a slight lisp. Oh, and one other thing. He
sounded, well an older man than you would expect.’

‘And you’re sure about the name?’

‘Certain. But it means nothing to me.’

‘Nor to me,’ said David. Felix went out and David sat and thought and shivered before he reached for the telephone. He had no trouble in getting to Connie Aveling.

The two men exchanged a formal greeting and David laid out the reason for his call: the death of McCabe, the contact with Felix from out of the blue, the menacing demand to meet on Saturday. The
voice of an older man, Felix had said, and definitely French in origin. David had never heard of him, but he gave his name — a Mr Thierry Cestac.

At his desk in Bastion HQ, Conrad was transfixed. He was also speechless and it took several bellows down the line from David before he became capable of reply.

‘I heard you, David, but there was some break in the line. Sorry.’

There was a pause while Connie tried to pull himself further together and then he went on,

‘I’ll go over all our reports on McCabe, see what else I can piece together. I’ll call back if I find anything. But also, David, I think I’ll come up to the meeting with
this man. I may be needed.’

He rang off abruptly, leaving David staring at his dead phone and thinking that this bad day was getting worse. Connie had sounded to be in another universe, distracted, uninterested: but at
least he would be here with us. It was good that he was so busy. He just had to get his head down and get on with it, ignoring for the moment all the horrors which might lie just around the corner.
Saturday would come soon enough.

This was exactly the expression used by Conrad in a conversation with himself as he stayed barricaded in his office, the telephone barred, meetings cancelled, visits and visitors postponed. The
overarching problem for him, which he had been wrestling to contain for a couple of years at least, was that he was sick and he couldn’t find the cure. Sickness, for him, was something which
you sorted with a course of pills or maybe an operation. It was all to do with a physical problem. Infirmity of mind or spirit, especially if brought on by that dreadful word ‘stress’,
was not a condition to be recognised by an Aveling. Stress was for wimps. Pressure was something to be endured.

Connie told himself that he was winning, but he had to acknowledge that he was still suffering from sudden rage and torment, mood swings, forgetfulness and the inclination to be morose and
grumpy. All this spelt worry which ate into the reserves of his energy and now he had to find enough of that to meet the challenge of this crisis. Could he do so? Admit it, he had been duplicitous.
He had accepted The Mansion House contract to watch over McCabe, and then done absolutely nothing about it. He had allowed Bastion to be paid at full rates for a job which he, personally, had then
ignored. Yes, he had been much wounded by David Heaven’s actions but he should not have been playing personal pique against commercial standards. But that’s done now. Whatever he might
discover over the next couple of days, it won’t bring back the brilliant geek with the easy morals and it won’t undo the damage done.