Exit wound ns-12 Read online

  Then the mayhem began.

  ‘Great service, wasn’t it?’ they all bellowed to each other. But unlike Dex, who’d meant it, they were just going through the motions.

  A voice piped up behind me that would have done the Tetley Tea Folk proud: ‘I’d rather have a shite life than a good service – that right, Nick?’

  I turned and now I could smile. ‘How’s it going, Red?’

  ‘Better than it looks as though it’s going for you, son. Look at you – shit state. Get yourself a decent suit.’ He produced a pack of Benson amp; Hedges.

  I shook my head, pointing at the disappearing black limos. ‘You’ll be hitching a lift in one of those any minute now, if you keep on with that shit.’

  ‘Good to know you still care, lad.’ He put one in his mouth and coaxed a flame from a purple disposable. He nodded across the cobblestoned courtyard. It had started to glisten in the light drizzle. I pulled up my collar and we started to walk.

  ‘How you been, anyway?’ he said. ‘I haven’t heard much about you since you left.’

  ‘This and that.’

  ‘The Firm, Dex said.’

  ‘Only when I first got out. I binned it. They hated me anyway.’

  He laughed. ‘They hate everyone, lad. You want a lift up to the do?’

  We’d reached the road. Red Ken pressed a key fob and the indicators flashed on a long silver Merc.

  ‘Whoa, you haven’t done badly!’

  He grinned as he opened the passenger door for me. ‘Better than most. Still way behind Tenny, of course.’

  I nodded. ‘But he never made prime minister.’

  ‘He still owes us our fucking peerages.’ He waved to a couple of lads who recognized him, threw away his half-smoked B amp;H and opened the driver’s door. He got in and played about with his seatbelt.

  We nudged into the traffic as the one big wiper silently removed the rain. I sank back into a world of black leather. The Premiership player in the dark grey suit was standing back from the crowd, watching the Merc disappear. ‘How’re Chrissie and the girls, Red?’

  He concentrated for a moment on the road as we wove through groups of mourners wandering oblivious to the traffic because they were too busy waffling to the mates they hadn’t seen since the last funeral they’d all been to.

  Finally he shook his head. ‘She binned me. The youngest is in the States. The other married a hairdresser and fucked off to Australia. Can’t blame them. Fuck-all left in Brown’s Britain, is there?’ He continued before I could even draw breath, keen to change the subject. Fair one. ‘What about you? Remarried? Kids?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘So it’s just you on your own, is it? Nicky No-mates-and-no-money?’

  I smiled. ‘Yep, just me. Who’s the woman?’

  ‘In the sun-gigs? Cinza. Not a clue why she’s with him. Maybe she saw him in his running shorts. She works in London for some Italian fashion mag.’

  The one-way system was blocked. It would have been quicker to walk. The Merc finally glided into the car park opposite the drill hall.

  ‘What do you do, Ken? How do I get one of these?’

  We climbed out into the drizzle and jogged towards the queue at the open door of the nineteenth-century Territorial Army building.

  He grinned. ‘Same as you – this and that.’

  ‘Must be a better bit of this and that than I’ve been fucking about with. I’ve been on the circuit now and again, daily rates.’

  ‘Still got your house?’

  I shook my head. ‘Renting – a studio flat in north London, near Tufnell Park.’

  He slapped me on the back. ‘There’s fuck-all wrong with you, is there? You need to sort yourself out, mate. Get a roof over your head and a good woman under you.’

  We filed in. The bar was doing a roaring trade. The bowls of peanuts on the veneered tables were already nearly empty.

  ‘There they are.’

  Dex and Cinza were standing by a table on which sat two fresh pints, and Cinza was clearly trying to work out what the hell was happening – why all these people were drinking and shovelling peanuts down their necks like there was no tomorrow.

  13

  Dex put down his G-and-T and held out the two pints. ‘Here you go, chaps.’ He toasted each of us with a clink of his glass and then presented his friend. ‘Nick, I’d like you to meet Cinza.’

  I raised my glass. ‘Hello.’

  Cinza had a mineral water in her perfectly manicured hand. ‘Now I have met two of your friends, Dexter.’ Her accent was as cut-glass as Dex’s – and about as sincere as the Queen’s. ‘Shall we go soon? I have a dinner this evening and-’

  ‘No, Chinni – three.’ Dex lifted his glass. ‘To Tennyson.’

  We toasted him, but there wasn’t even enough time to get my glass back on the table and my fist around what was left of the peanuts before Cinza started having words with Dex about their travel arrangements.

  Red Ken leant towards me. ‘Tenny was getting out after this, you know. He got zapped the last week of his tour. Nightmare, eh?’

  ‘I always thought he’d be in until they kicked him out or carried him out.’

  Dex had been chewing the slice of lemon from his glass during the negotiations. Cinza finally lost patience and got on her mobile. He turned to us. ‘Actually, we persuaded him to come in on a little venture of ours instead.’ He turned back and interrupted her call. ‘Chinni, darling, I’ll drive you back in plenty of time. Just a while longer to talk to old friends.’ He kissed her cheek as she waffled away in Italian, then turned and winked at us. ‘She’ll be fine. So hot-blooded!’

  She certainly was. As she closed down her mobile she stormed off in the direction of the door, with Dex trailing behind. ‘Darling, just a few more minutes…’

  Red Ken took a gulp of Stella, then stopped halfway and watched how the men in her path reacted. It was like the parting of the Red Sea; their eyes followed her every move. He lowered his glass and wiped the sides of his mouth with his finger. ‘We all did our time, lad, and what have we got to show for it, eh? Fuck-all, apart from a regimental tie or a padded coffin. Once you’re dead or out, who gives a shit about you? So fuck ’em, I say. Steak for them, burgers for the likes of us – I’ve had enough of it. Time to have some of the prime beef for ourselves. The same goes for Dex – and the same went for Tenny too. He only stayed in because he had to provide for the girls. Old soldiers just fade away? My arse – we have plans.’

  ‘Plans?’

  ‘Can’t tell you, son, unless you come in. I’m glad you’re here – me and Dex were hoping. The three of us had kept in touch.’ He smiled. ‘Not like you, you shite. We need a third man now Tenny’s gone.’

  Dex reappeared, a little out of breath and with one cheek even darker than usual. ‘She loves me really – I think.’ Cinza had obviously treated him to a good slapping. He palmed the small beads of sweat from his shaved head. ‘I’ll call her tomorrow.’

  Red Ken tutted like a disapproving dad. ‘Loves you? You only met her yesterday. Fucking soft in the head, lad, you.’

  Dex couldn’t disagree.

  ‘I asked Nick here if he fancies coming in as our number three.’

  Dex slapped me on the shoulder with one hand as the other reached for his drink. ‘Would you like to take Tenny’s place in our little wheeze?’

  I checked Dex and Red Ken. They waited, glasses in hand. ‘Wheeze?’

  Red Ken glanced round the room. ‘We can’t be talking about anything here. You going back to that squat of yours in Tufnell Park? How you travelling?’

  ‘Train.’

  ‘Come with us.’ Red Ken jerked his head at Dex, who had started singing along with the jukebox. ‘He’ll be coming too, now he’s lost his lift.’

  I followed the two of them through the door. ‘As long as Dex ain’t driving.’

  We were soon heading south towards Peterborough and onto the A1. Dex was at the wheel. I should have kept my mouth shut. He was drivi
ng like a lunatic, of course, as if this thing had wings instead of wheels. Red Ken and I were both strapped in at the back. I kept my attention firmly fixed on the traffic in front of us, catching Dex’s eye in the rear-view from time to time. He was smiling away to himself, head bouncing from side to side as he hummed a tune.

  Red Ken also had his eyes riveted to the windscreen, ready to adopt the position when Dex finally achieved his death wish. ‘Let’s kick this off, then, shall we, lads?’

  Dex nodded and grunted. Or maybe he was rapping – it was hard to tell.

  ‘This is what we’ve got, Nick. We’re going to steal a shed-load of gold. I’ll tell you where from once you say you’re in. Don’t worry, it’s not a bank, more like a warehouse. We’ve checked it out. We know we can make entry, and have a good route out.’

  ‘How much of a shed-load?’

  Dex turned his head round just a little too much for my liking as the speedometer nudged ninety-five on the dual carriageway. ‘Three metric tonnes – but two tonnes of that is structure. It ends up as a thousand kilograms of the yellow stuff.’

  Red Ken had got his BlackBerry out and was already online. He tuned in to bullionvault.com and turned the screen towards me.

  ‘Structure?’

  The screen filled with charts and Red Ken held it closer. ‘You’ll find out if you’re in, won’t you? Now, the price of gold this minute is thirty thousand, six hundred and fifty US dollars per kilo. That’s already up six hundred a kilo today.’

  He came out of the site and started on the calculator. I didn’t have to bother with the mental arithmetic. I knew it was going to be buckets.

  Red Ken’s extra-large thumbs pounded the keys. He had to start again as they hit too many at once.

  ‘Six days ago, Nick, the price was twenty-eight thousand, six hundred. So… Right, here we are… We’re now looking at-’ He shoved the BlackBerry back towards me. ‘Thirty point five bar.’

  I looked at the calculator. He was right: 30,500,000. ‘A few zeros ain’t going to make me jump in. I need to know where it is, what it is, who it belongs to, how you plan to do the job, and where the gold goes afterwards.’

  Dex’s laugh came so suddenly and so loudly it made both of us jump. ‘We knew you were our man. Just like the old days!’ The laughter stopped, and I wasn’t sure who he was talking to next. ‘Well, not exactly, come to think of it. I’m not doing it for Queen and country any more, I’m doing it for me. So really, it’s-’

  Red Ken sank back into the leather. ‘Dex, shut the fuck up, will you?’

  I still wasn’t getting the questions answered. ‘Lads, I need to know what I’m getting into here.’

  ‘I want to tell you. I’d lay the cards out, but there’s someone else involved. I got to talk to him first.’

  ‘Who?’

  Red Ken sat back up and turned to me. ‘Nick, it’s a tough call, I know, but I can’t tell you, not yet. You know the score. Listen, the reason you’re here is because we need you and we trust you, so you got to trust us.’

  ‘Sorry, lads, I’m not getting into anything I don’t know about. I’m not going to be part of it until you-’

  ‘Chaps!’ Dex’s hand was off the wheel. ‘This is all getting rather boring. Nick, the job is in Dubai. It’s a pair of gold doors that Saddam had made in the UAE for his palace in Basra. But, of course, they never made it into Iraq, did they? They’re just sitting there, ready for an extension to put them on.’ He laughed at his own joke. ‘The gold won’t even be missed. No one knows the doors exist – and is the UAE going to jump up and down when they disappear and let the world know they were dealing with big bad S a year before the invasion? Not on your nelly! It’s a victimless crime. It’s not like we’re mugging someone’s granny.’

  ‘That’s all well and good, but we’ll still have to sell the shit. How much are we getting out of that thirty and a half bar?’

  Red Ken wasn’t happy with Dex, but so what? ‘Forty cents on the dollar.’ He tapped away on his BlackBerry. ‘That’s twelve and a quarter bar.’

  Dex laughed. He was probably already walking round the Ferrari showroom in his head.

  ‘But who’s buying it? Where’s it going?’

  Dex was now driving as if he was in one. ‘That’s the thing we don’t know, old chap – and, quite frankly, I don’t care.’

  Red Ken nodded. ‘Nick, we’re the only ones who are going to look after us. It’s time for some steak. What do you say, mate? Twelve and a quarter bar three ways – and a bit for Janice and the kids.’

  Dex was studying me in the rear-view. He winked. ‘You know it makes sense, chappie. You look as if you could do with the world’s biggest leg-up. The doors are even flat-packed for us. Six crates, six by four by two. It’ll be like loading up at IKEA.’

  I turned back to Red Ken. ‘You really going for it?’

  ‘It’s all planned. Two weeks, wheels turn. You need to be with us, mate. It’s what Tenny would have wanted.’

  ‘Lads, it sounds too good to be true. If anyone else came to me with this I’d think they were pissed.’ I sat back while they waited for an answer. ‘You’re not selling it to me, but I’m in.’

  They exchanged a big smile.

  ‘But the only reason is because you two have shit for brains. I’m coming to look after you.’

  PART THREE

  14

  Wednesday, 29 April 2009

  0220 hrs

  Dex studied the little plastic cup his G-and-T had been served in like it was something he’d found under his shoe. He finally gave it a squeeze and moved it to his mouth. He took a sip and turned in his seat to face the two of us in the row behind. ‘Cheers, chaps.’

  I returned the toast with a red wine that perfectly matched the shit-on-a-tray in front of me.

  Kenneth Merryweather, as his cover passport called him, wasn’t so enthusiastic. ‘Yeah, cheers.’ He dunked his bread roll in his wine and had a munch.

  We still had half the seven-hour flight from Heathrow ahead of us. I’d been expecting us to be packed in like sardines, the price you pay for taking your golf trip on the cheap, but I was wrong. There were fewer than a hundred people on the aircraft. Nearly everyone, except Red Ken and me, had their own row of seats to spread out on.

  ‘Empty planes out, full planes back.’ Mr Merryweather was taking a lot of pleasure in how hard the recession had hit Dubai. ‘There are more than three thousand wagons abandoned in the airport car parks at any one time because of expats doing runners.’ He shook his head. ‘Lose your job, and those fuckers hold your bank account until you pay your debts – and lots of people are losing their jobs. It’s better to get straight to the airport and fuck off before they get a grip of you.’

  I’d never been to Dubai, and Dexter Khan had only ever transited through before the two recces he’d made with Red Ken. Tenny would have been fresh to it too. Red Ken and Dex had already prepared the ground on those two trips. As soon as we met the guy who’d brought Red Ken the idea in the first place, it was straight into the job.

  Red Ken knew Dubai like the back of his hand. He had worked there on the BG (bodyguarding) circuit for the best part of a year. It was supposed to have been for much longer. Chrissie had even gone out and joined him. Whatever it was that had gone wrong in their marriage, I got the sense that Dubai had tipped the scales. I wasn’t going to ask specifics. If he’d wanted me to know he would have told me.

  Of much greater concern for me was the lack of information. Not just the little I had been told, but the little they seemed to know. It was unlike these two to go into something so serious without being in control. Something was wrong with this job, and something was wrong with these two to make them take such a risk. They’d thought it was a joke when I’d said I was coming along to look after them. It wasn’t.

  Dex turned to face us again. ‘Tuck in, chaps – you’ll need plenty of energy for eighteen holes.’ He was a member of a posh club in Surrey and had brought his own clubs with him. He
was even wearing a blue Pringle sweater and Burberry patterned slacks. Red Ken was dressed much the same, and unfortunately so was I. We looked like P. Diddy’s entourage.

  Three days ago, Red Ken had let me rant on about how much I hated golf. I couldn’t see the reason for it except as an excuse for dickheads like Dex to wear clown outfits. To me it was a waste of land, sand, time, water and metal. Only once I’d finished condemning every golf player on the planet did Red Ken admit he also played – and that Dex had put him up for membership.

  The worst news was that he had an old set of clubs he was going to lend me. Everything had to look normal. I couldn’t be walking round with brand-new gear. We were three car-showroom salesmen, off to ‘swing a few’, as Dex put it, and maybe have some other fun. Dubai was awash with Russian whores, Red Ken said. One of the things Chrissie had hated about the place was prostitutes looking her up and down if she had a drink with her husband in a hotel bar. They’d thought she was invading their turf.

  I’d looked around at our fellow passengers in Departures. One or two groups looked much the same as us. Our cover was good. Nothing could be discovered about us because nothing was hidden.

  The four PMC (private military company) guys on their way to Kabul had also been easy to place, with their chunky Luminoxes hanging off their wrists with mini compasses on the straps, and high-sleeved T-shirts to show off their new biceps. The only air bridges into Kabul were via Delhi and Dubai, and I knew from past experience which airport I’d rather transit through. Apart from work, the only two things to do out there were watch porn and take part in Operation Massive: hitting the weights. The NAAFI in Kandahar sold more tubs of body-building supplements than Mars bars. But what really gave these guys away were the desert-coloured Bug Out day-sacks that everyone bought from the American PX. Every bit as much a badge, I supposed, as our stupid golf bags. They’d certainly looked back at Merryweather, Khan and Simmons the same way Dex had looked at his plastic cup.

  The other two knew what they were doing when it came to drivers and putters, but I was on the five-day trip as a golf atheist. They were going to enlighten and convert me. There would be no talk of the job during the flight or at any time unless we were out of a building and on our own. Dubai might be Disneyland on Gas Mark Ten, as Red Ken called it, but the place was swarming with police informers. The government had an image to protect. They were even thinking about a law to prosecute locally based journalists if they hinted Dubai was being hit by the world downturn.