The Saint Jude Rules (Cal Winter Book 3) Read online

  Everyone’s convinced they’re on the side of the angels. I worked that out in Iraq. “You were under duress when you killed that airman?”

  “Perhaps,” she shrugged. “It was a long time ago. Would you care for a drink?”

  I raised the Ruger. “Please, don’t go for a weapon.”

  “I just want a glass of wine. A last cigarette sounds too obvious.” Muller went to a rickety table and sploshed Spanish red into mismatched glasses.

  Nodding my thanks, I slurped my drink, pistol levelled at her belly.

  “I can see you don’t want to be here,” Muller half-whispered. “You look… sick.”

  I shrugged. “Quite. We were talking about duress.”

  “In war, you use any tactic to win,” she replied. “The law is another tactic. In the last war you’d have dug a tunnel and headed for Switzerland. Now you get a good lawyer and litigate your way out of captivity.”

  “Are you still at war, Greta?”

  Muller smiled, eyes creased, lips red. For a second I saw the woman she used to be. “I haven’t heard that name for a while. My days of guns and bombs? They are finished. I’m just an activist now, sharing ideas. Supporting the struggle from the side-lines.”

  Outside, somewhere, was a rifleman. Could he see me now, through the grime-smeared windows? The wine tasted sour. I gulped it down anyway.

  “Who wants me dead?” Muller asked, taking a sip. “Someone who still cares about a long-dead American? His job was loading bombs into the bellies of fascist warplanes. He knew the risks.”

  “Someone obviously cares. Why else am I here?”

  She dropped the wine glass. It didn’t break. “Just do your job, attentäter. But remember: one day your world will end, probably in blood and fire. You will make a decision. Which way will you fall?”

  Something burned in my skull. In my mind’s eye, I saw Bishop eating dessert and grinning. Yes, I should kill this ludicrous, brain-washed harpy. Harry was right. Even Bishop was right. I was a murderer. I looked at the paintings, crazy black mountains. Monster-infested forests. My stomach churned. Acid. Bile. Something twisted and sharp.

  Greta Muller smiled warmly. A you’re-not-going-to-shoot-me smile.

  I thought of a hot bath. Towelling robes. The Park Lane Hilton, a glass of scotch in my hand. Maybe I could score some white on the way. Throw myself a one-man party. I nudged the barrel against Greta Muller’s temple, smelt her wine-sour breath. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  It was the first of many lies I told during my time on The Firm.

  I pulled the trigger. Muller fell to her knees, eyes rolling into the back of her head. I fired again. Oily blood slicked around her.

  The phone trilled in my pocket. Harry. “Get out. Leave the weapon in situ.”

  “Who wanted her dead?”

  “It doesn’t matter. You’re just the delivery man.”

  I dropped the pistol. “Delivering what?”

  “Karma.”

  I lurched outside. Two burly men passed me with a friendly nod. They wore splash-proof coveralls and wellington boots. One carried an open holdall containing power tools. The van I’d seen parked at the station was nearby. I drove away. Where was I going to find a drink and a couple of grams, out here in the sticks?

  That was the answer, a drink and a couple of grams.

  Chapter One

  Ten years later

  Hellissandur, Western Iceland

  The War started, as wars often do, with a surprise attack.

  The Firm’s opening gambit was simple - they lured Oz, my co-conspirator, home. His elderly mother was picking up cake for a church coffee morning. Nudged by a careless driver in an Ipswich supermarket car park, just enough to break her leg. They knew Oz loved his old mum. I guessed they somehow tracked his journey there and back.

  An asset was deployed to take me out. A trained man with a gun and nothing to lose. He waited until I took my morning run, from the farmhouse to the glacier and back. Cosseted in my lonely bunker at the end of the world, I’d grown complacent. Back in the day, when I breakfasted on Stolichnaya and Tramadol, I was more alert.

  I ran, breath making fog-ghosts in the morning air. Stuff on my mind: I had to close down the safe-house. I needed to upload the STREGA file, the mother-lode of The Firm’s dirty secrets, onto the cloud. Harry, my old handler, passed it to me. I still wondered why. My cash and credit cards were in a hide behind the fridge. Passport and clothes packed. The e-ticket, Keflavik to Heathrow, was booked for a late flight. Security would be clock-watching, waiting for their shift to finish.

  I pounded the coastal path, volcanic landscape bible black and rifle green. Running into the wind, eyes wet, trainers slapping against semi-thawed earth. Gimme Shelter roared in my ear-buds, seguing noisily into Sympathy for the Devil. To my right was a higgledy-piggledy line of rocks, flat like the tops of anvils. For no particular reason, I hopped onto one and leapt to the next, catching my breath at the effort. Moving like Jagger.

  I missed the patch of slimy moss.

  My foot slid, arms flailing for balance. The opening riff of You Can’t Always Get What You Want pounded my ears, Mick warbling about Chelsea and drug stores.

  Never heard the bullet. I felt it, though. I get shot at for a living.

  The sonic wash furrowed the air an inch from my nose. On the other side of the track was a culvert. Cover. A good place to fall. I rolled, hitting the ground shoulder-first. A second bullet nicked the toe of my training shoe. A third struck a rock, caromed into the sky. I pushed myself flat to the gorse-covered ground. It smelt earthy and wet, like a freshly-dug grave. The bullet had shorn the rubber bump-strip from the front of my trainer.

  Survival calculus churned my brain: Sniper to the south, firing into a strong crosswind. High-calibre rifle. Given the speed of the second and third round, it was semi-automatic. You couldn’t work the bolt on a rifle that fast. I tried to guess the shooter’s location: An expert like Alex Bytchakov, an operator on my team, could pull off the shot at two thousand metres. But I was alive: this guy was no Alex Bytchakov.

  Still, the sniper had the better hand in this game and I only had one card to play. The Joker. My would-be assassin had to confirm I was dead. There’s nothing worse than going back to your handler boasting of a kill when, a week later, the target pops up on your customer’s radar.

  If doctors make the worst patients, assassins make the worst targets. If I were in the sniper’s boots, I’d be cursing the decision to shoot me bounding across the rocks. I’d fallen into the only half-decent piece of cover for two hundred metres. My would-be murderer couldn’t see me from his firing position. I was tucked into a shallow crease in the stubborn, mauve-brown gorse. If he could see me, he’d have put a round through my swede by now.

  No, I wasn’t going to find him. He’d have to come to me.

  I’d also be worried about my exfil plan. 7.62 rounds are elephant-gun loud. The wind would’ve dragged the noise, the whip-crack of bullets piercing the sound barrier, back towards the village. You’d sometimes find a lonely cop there, sipping coffee in his battered Nissan Patrol. Icelandic police don’t carry guns, but they’ve got radios and a SWAT team. Besides, the place was an island, easily sealed. Yes, I’d want to get in close, confirm my kill and pop smoke. Back home in time for tea and medals.

  I rolled onto my stomach and crawled forward, tucking myself tight into the culvert. The camber up to the track was steep, maybe a metre and a half. The bastard would need to get in close to see me. But if he moved left or right to flank my position, I’d see him first. My Glock-19 was taped to the small of my back. I peeled it away and nudged back the slide. Copper-jacketed reassurance glinted in the chamber.

  Ten minutes. An eternity on the sweep hand of my army-surplus G10.

  Finally, the shooter crept into view, like a barefoot man in a roomful of mousetraps. I lay on my side, playing dead. I’d left a stray ear-bud on the ground next to me, bleeding tinny music. He had a thin, hollow-cheeked face, s
treaked with camouflage paint. I recognised him – an ex-Royal Marine called Briggs, new to The Firm. He’d got into debt with a big-time crime network, ended up working as an enforcer. They said he murdered a fellow gang member in a drunken brawl. The Firm offered him a way out.

  For a moment I was mildly offended – didn’t I warrant an ‘A’ Team of The Firm’s best operators? Not the new boy.

  Then I realised the ‘A’ Team would be sent after Oz.

  Briggs wore a camouflaged ghillie suit, an FN-FAL rifle slung over his shoulder. He trod warily towards me, pistol pushed out in a Weaver grip. He took aim, head tilted. My finger took up the pressure on the Glock’s trigger. He stepped closer, face grim behind war-paint. I punched out the pistol and fired.

  The round struck Briggs halfway between shoulder and pectoral. Possibly survivable, but the Glock was loaded with modified Winchester Supreme Elite PDX1s. That’s gun-speak for hollow-point death-bullets. The 9mm round struck at twelve-hundred feet per second, blowing Briggs off his feet. He landed on his backside, a puzzled look on his face. I fired again, hitting him square in the guts. He groaned, a wet bubbling noise escaping his lips. Scrambling to my feet, I lined up his face in the ‘19’s rear sights and finished it.

  No point talking.

  I knew who he was, who he worked for and what his orders were. Tasked by a handler he’d never met, receiving his briefing package via encrypted comms. Mission funds dropped into his account, via a dozen multi-jurisdictional banks and front companies. Weapons and kit hidden in-theatre by a covert facilities agent. Targeting done by secret watchers, the operation sanctioned by SCRIVENER, The Firm’s intelligence cell.

  It was all in the files.

  Anyhow, I felt sorry for the poor bastard. Press-ganged and given the shitty job of retiring that old drunkard Cal Winter, skulking in Iceland. Services no longer required. Winter’s over the hill, Briggsy, feeling sorry for himself. He’ll be pissed as a fart. To be honest, mate, it’s a mercy-killing. What if he squeals? He’ll fuck it for all of us…

  I rolled the body into the ditch. His pistol was unusual, an FN Herstal 5-7. Excellent kit, which had done him no good whatsoever. The greenish-grey scrim of Briggs’s camouflage suit concealed his body from casual view. He might be found in a week or so, by which time this thing would be over. One way or the other.

  I policed my spent brass and jogged away. Taking a detour to the beach, I field-stripped the Glock and tossed the pieces into the waves. Back at the farmhouse I scooped a smartphone from my desk. I sent a text message to Oz. It said OFFSIDE RULE. It was our agreed code word for a compromise. We had a plan for that.

  Except no plan survives first contact with the enemy.

  I showered and dressed: crisp white shirt, dark knit tie, petrol-blue Paul Smith suit and polished loafers. I carried only hand luggage, a clean phone, passport and a thousand quid in cash. Locking the house for the last time, I slipped the key through the letterbox and drove to Reykjavik. I was going home, to London.

  So the War continued, as wars often do, with a counter-attack.

  Chapter Two

  At Heathrow, a woman in a cheap uniform feigned interest in my passport. Thirty minutes later I was in Paddington. The station was dark, last-train quiet, tipsy commuters queuing for burgers. Retrieving a copy of the Metro from a bin, I took a taxi to a bar near Smithfield Market. Retro-nineties guitar music thumped from hidden speakers.

  The old man sat in the corner, back to the wall, reading a newspaper. He wore a tangerine-coloured jumper underneath a leather blouson, hair scraped across his oily scalp. He caught my eye for a second. Making my way past students and office workers, I ordered a pint of London Pride. The old man drained his glass and shuffled past me. We swapped newspapers as he left, a fluid brush-contact.

  His name was Isaac Samuels, one of The Firm’s ex-forgers. He’d volunteered to help me - a dangerous decision, but Isaac despised my ex-handler, Monty. Wanted him dead. Monty once made Isaac forge papers for him when he was still a spook, had him half-killed when a job went wrong. Payback was high on Isaac’s agenda and I’d promised to deliver.

  I sipped my beer. I hadn’t touched a drop in months, but it helped me blend in. Finishing my drink, I visited the men’s room. A thousand Cal Winters bounced off mirrored walls, tired and grey. Locking myself in a cubicle, I unfolded the newspaper. The padded envelope fell on my lap.

  Inside was a UK passport, driving licence and national insurance card in a name that wasn’t mine. Two credit cards, one for a Swiss bank. And cash: you’ll be amazed how small you can make fifty grand if you vacuum-pack it. Then there was the key fob and registration certificate for a three-year old BMW. Now I had wheels, a roof, ID and funds. In this type of war, it was as good as air support. I left the bar and walked to my hotel. Holborn, the no-man’s land that’s neither the West End or the City.

  I dumped my bag and took out my phone, pinging Oz a message. He called five minutes later. “How’s your old lady?” I said.

  “She’ll be OK,” he said icily. “Monty ain’t returning my calls.” Now The Firm had begun hostilities, it would be Monty’s responsibility to find and eliminate us.

  “You need to move her,” I said.

  “She’s on a plane to Madeira. Who did they send for you?”

  “Briggs,” I said. “How about you?”

  Oz snorted. “Dickinson and Easton had a go. Handy blokes, on a good day.”

  “And?”

  “They had a bad day. We stick to the plan?”

  “Yeah,” I said firmly, “we return the serve.”

  “OK, when?”

  I looked at my watch. “RV tomorrow, twenty-two hundred.”

  “Roger,” Oz replied.

  “I’m glad you’re okay, mate,” I said.” Oz. Ex-Special Boat Service. We’d worked together for a decade. “I’m glad you came along for the ride.”

  “Soppy bastard,” he replied. “What choice did I have?”

  He could have walked, of course, stayed with The Firm. But I let it lie.

  Ending the call, I stripped and showered. The water was near-scalding as I soaped myself down, my body criss-crossed with scar tissue and Moscow gangster ink. I’d never be clean, but you have to try.

  The only other person I’d usually call was Sam, Clarkie’s widow. Sam was default family, but I didn’t want her involved. I’d cut all links to her. That way, when The Firm tried to identify vulnerabilities in my private life, she wouldn’t be on the radar.

  Sam took it well. I think she was relieved.

  The aftertaste of the pint I’d drunk earlier haunted my mouth. Anxiety sat on my shoulder, a miniature demon, spitting paranoia in my ear. I knew I was coming off the dopamine dump I’d been operating on since I shot Briggs. Towelling myself dry, I opened the fridge. There was the usual collection of beer, spirits in tiny bottles and a lonely bag of cashews. I closed the door and brewed up tea.

  On the TV news, hooded men executed bewildered Christians on a sandy beach. The hostages shuffled to their deaths, ankles shackled, orange boiler-suits flapping in the breeze. A choir chanted a nasheed, triumphant and ecstatic. Look at our heroes! Chopping off the heads of men with hands bound behind their backs!

  Jesus, these kids were doing this shit for free. Meanwhile, Russian warships cruised the Baltic and Black Sea, trolling the West. Their warplanes ranged freely through our airspace. Politicians, whey-faced and scared, tried to make sense of the fuck-up that was the 21st Century. Even the European project lay in tatters, grumpy men in Brussels pretending they still mattered.

  I slept dreamlessly and woke early. Shaved, ironed a shirt and buffed my shoes. Tied a Windsor knot, checked the silk square in my breast pocket. Breakfast was scrambled eggs and a slice of dry toast, washed down with black coffee. On the street, the air smelt of car fumes and pastries from a nearby café. My eyes tracked the building line, looking for watchers. Nothing sparked me up.

  I strolled to a carpark and took an elevator down. Pressing the fob
in my pocket, the lights flashed on a saloon tucked in a shadowy corner. BMW ‘M’ series, the colour of wet gunmetal. I ran a finger along the bonnet: turbo V8 engine, aught-to-sixty in four seconds. A bit flash, but this was London. I settled into the driver’s seat. The pistol was hidden in a bracket welded under the seat. I’d been very precise about the weapon, was pleased to see Isaac followed instructions. It was a box-fresh Sig-Sauer 1911 TACOPS TB, with Ergo XT grips and a custom suppressor. A modern retooling of the classic Colt 1911, hard-hitting and reliable.

  The engine growled as I stroked the accelerator with my foot. I motored up the ramp, out onto Tottenham Court Road and west towards the motorway. My phone buzzed with a message. It was Oz, confirming the location of our RV. My target was a logistician. Not an obvious target. His name didn’t feature in the STREGA file. He was low-profile. Off the radar.

  But he’d know where Harry was.

  And he was going to tell me.

  Chapter three

  We made our way along the beach, armed and armoured, bluish light beading the horizon. Oz produced a pair of bolt-croppers and snapped the padlock on the garden gate. The house, handsome and secluded, had treble-glazed doors with security glass. I pulled a key from my pocket, sprayed it with lubricant and slid it in the lock.

  Inside, precisely-positioned photos lined the walls: bearded men lounged in sandy-pink Land Rovers, bristling with weapons. Iraq, 2003. A young rifleman in vintage camouflage posed by a wall mural. East Belfast, Freedom Corner, 1986. Moustachioed NCOs in scarlet mess dress and medals sat rigidly for a mess photograph. Minden, the former SS barracks outside the old town. 1989, the year The Wall came down.

  The bedroom overlooked the beach. The sleeping man was naked: late fifties, heavily-muscled, hair cropped close to his skull. I pressed my .45 to the side of his head, pinning him to the mattress.

  Craig Bishop opened an eye. “Who is it?”