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Tricia hadn’t looked too pleased that I was going to dash back to the Prep Centre but what did she expect? It was one of the longest drives of my life. I had the mobile on all the way but no one called. I was driving as fast as I could without wanting to attract attention from the law – this was no time to be having to explain why I was speeding.
I dashed into the Centre and made for the Doc’s office. Her stressed and haggard look didn’t give me any encouragement.
“How is she?” I asked. “Rachel, how is she?”
“I don’t know. Maybe OK, maybe not. She had another attack.”
“What do you mean, another attack? The first one wasn’t real! Remember? It was a set up.”
“Sure, I remember. Well this wasn’t a set up, this was for real.”
“Are you sure?”
“Mmm,” she nodded. “Look, it’s probably just as well we faked the first one. The same guard was on duty. He called me straight away. ‘She’s had another one,’ he said, ‘one of those anorexic shocks. Just like last time.’ I was puzzled. I ran down there anyway, half expecting it to be some piece of faking; though how that could be after all the programme work she’d done I didn’t know. He was right it was real. Luckily I had my needles and the adrenaline. She was lying on the floor just like before. There was a plate on the floor where she’d dropped it. Walnut cake. Sukie was sitting on the bed sobbing, saying she’d just made it as a treat, she thought she’d love it. That she’d never guessed.”
“But you got the adrenaline in her? So she’s OK?”
“Maybe?”
“Why only maybe?”
“I don’t know if I was quick enough. It’s not an infallible cure. We have to replace the fluids, deal with the shock She’s still unconscious. There could be brain damage, I don’t know if I got the oxygen into her quickly enough. Especially after all we’ve been putting her through. I don’t know what state she was in, how resilient she was.”
“Can I see her?”
The Doc shook her head. “Not for a while,” she said, “I’d really like her not to be disturbed. And I want to get her to recover from this attack as well as she did from the last one. Only this time it’s going to be more difficult.”
“How’s Sukie?”
“I’m not sure. She was very upset. I’ve not seen her since we brought Rachel up here.”
If I couldn’t be with Rachel then Sukie was the one that needed me most. Actually even if I could have been with Rachel I was probably more use to Sukie. I went down to the apartment to find her.
She was still sitting where the Doc had said she’d left her, staring blankly ahead. I sat down beside her. “It’s all right, Sukie,” I said as comfortingly as I could, “I’m sure she’ll be all right. The Doc got to her in good time.”
She seemed not to notice what I was saying. “I made it for her. She’d finished the script. For the video. It was a treat. She was so happy, with her programme, so happy with her writing. She just grabbed her throat and fell. Down there.” She pointed to the floor. “She never said she couldn’t eat it. I didn’t know.”
“Of course not Sukie. She probably didn’t know herself. It can happen without warning. With things you’ve eaten before. She’ll be OK.” I reached out towards her and took her in my arms. She didn’t cry, she just sat there hanging on to me as though her life depended on it.
I sat with her all night until finally, about dawn, she fell asleep. I laid her back on the couch and covered her with a blanket before leaving to find out what the Doc had to say. Her advice was to wait. Rachel had had a quiet night. That was probably as good as it got at that stage. The Doc still wasn’t letting me see her. I went and found some coffee. I felt like shit.
The Doc found me later that morning asleep in one of the chairs in the canteen, a half empty cup of coffee on the table beside me. Things were looking better she said. I looked at my watch, I’d missed out on the briefing session for the lift that was going on right then. It didn’t seem to matter.
It felt like it had been a long time since I’d kicked off the project for Steve Glennis but finally we were making some progress. Research had done their work profiling the possible candidates. As I’d thought, their favourite was Lady Angela Marchmont too. Now the snatch team was out on the job.
I made my way over to the briefing room to wait for some news.
I looked up at the wall. The pictures, plans and diagrammes that had been used to brief the snatch team were still there, pinned to the large cork panel that stretched along one side of the room. The architectural model of Marchmont Hall, constructed from the helpfully detailed plan found in the hall’s guide book, “Marchmont Hall – A Regency Masterpiece” – stood on the table in the centre.
In the middle of the cork panel was a large
grainy photograph of the target, the twenty seven year old heiress to the Marchmont titles and estate. Around it were other
photographs, some clipped from a recent article in “Hello!” magazine. “Wild
Child or Lady of the Manor?” said the headline, “Lady Marchmont
talks to us in her delightful home.” The pictures, part fashion plates, part
picture post cards showed an elegantly dressed Lady Angela, draped across the
furniture in the great gallery of the Hall, surrounded by its famous paintings.
One, in contrast, showed the other side of Lady Angela, clad in tight leathers
she sat astride the powerful motorbike that she was famed for riding at high
speed through the lanes between Marchmont Hall and
her flat in
The Marchmont collection of paintings was providing the cover for the snatch team. They would be arriving at the Hall at this very moment - a group of fine art assessors from the National Gallery, anxious to see whether the contents of the Marchmont galleries would qualify for a National Heritage Grant. As assessors of course they would be taking the greatest of care not to contaminate the pictures in any way while they examined them closely. As a result, Harry had said, this was a job where you can turn up legitimately wearing latex gloves. Training the team had been a time consuming exercise, not many of Harry’s squad had much of an idea about art, much less the finer points of Flemish seventeenth century genre painting. However after some intensive cramming at least they could tell the difference between a Rubens and a Picasso.
They’d worked out a cover story for her
disappearance. Even the British police tend to sit up and take notice when one
of the aristocracy goes missing. There would be a
ransom demand; lots of threats from the kidnappers and plaintiff appeals from
her ladyship, Whether
or not the ransom got paid was pretty irrelevant but when she wasn’t released
it would look like a kidnap that had gone wrong.
However, it wasn’t to be. Harry came storming back into the briefing room two hours later with a severe sense of humour failure. Two cock ups, he bellowed, two cock ups on one job.
“What went wrong?” I said.
“Well it’s not so much that we did anything
wrong but the target wasn’t there. Lady Angela’s butler most
apologetic. Terribly nice chap. Awfully sorry
we’d been inconvenienced. Certain that Lady A must not have realised we were
coming. Gone off to
“Harry have you given up using pronouns? And anyway, you said two cock ups.”
“Sorry. It was talking to that butler. One
cock up was no target; the other was that when the
“You didn’t have two teams on the job did you?
“No. I can only imagine that we came up with such a plausible snatch arrangement that the real thing was actually going on as well. I think we’ll have to stand down that whole idea.”
”Well, I don’t really want to wait too long
anyway if we can avoid it. Steve’s keen to get a driver in place as soon as he
can and Lady A is going to need quite a bit of orientation. Can’t we set
something up in
“Luge”
“Luge?” I said, in ignorance. “Pistol shooting?”
“No, that’s Luger,” Harry said, “Luge. It’s a sort of toboggan. She’s going to try to get a slide on the Cresta Run.”
“Is that difficult?”
“It’s difficult to do well, or rather quickly, and come off at the bottom with all your bones intact. Plus of course her ladyship has two important limitations when it comes to sliding the Cresta.”
“And they are?”
“Her tits,” Harry laughed. “The Cresta was closed to women in 1929. The men won’t let the girls play on their pitch. You’d have thought they’d make an exception for the luge.”
“How come?” I was getting mildly irritated by Harry’s evident advance knowledge.
“They go down on their backs.”
“Oh, very droll,” I said. “So how’s is Lady A going to do it?”
“I don’t know, but knowing her she’ll find
a way. Oh well, if it means a trip to some expensive hotel in
I wasn’t keen to leave Rachel but I was worried about this job - Freddie had been very keen that we get Steve’s collection sorted after all the time it had taken, and I guess I was a bit twitchy after the meeting we’d all had. The Doc said there wasn’t anything I could do for Rachel for at least forty eight hours. Sukie seemed to have withdrawn completely inside herself – I couldn’t get more than a monosyllabic response to anything. I told her I’d be away for two days. She nodded. I could see she didn’t care.
That evening I found myself with the whole
team in
Harry had found out that she’d be using a practice run on the other side of the valley the next morning. He’d set up the collection with the team’s usual, careful attention to detail.
“Now this is where you get to watch some professionals in action,” Harry said confidently, passing me a pair of binoculars. “Her ladyship will do her little run down the course. She’ll step out through the timing hut you can see and as she does so, two of our lot will be there to suggest in quite a firm way that she accompanies them for a ride of a different kind. We’ll catch up with them all back at the rendezvous. Ah there she is now.”
I swung my binoculars to the top of the run. Sure enough, Lady Marchmont was standing talking to a couple of others. Even from this distance she looked stunning. She was wearing a skin tight body suit of some shimmering fabric in an iridescent black. Her hair shone in the alpine sun as she talked animatedly with the others. She was holding her helmet in one hand. The luge lay on the snow beside her feet. The others headed off as she made herself ready for her run, scoping her hair up and putting on her helmet.
She took a few moments, evidently sizing up the run before she launched herself down the track and laid back, her helmet only inches from the pounding ice. The luge wound around the series of tightly banked bends, running ever faster. I watched as she came into a slower, straight section but as I did so my view was obscured by a cloud of snow.
“Hey,” called Harry, “what’s going on?” I swung my binoculars first left then right and saw a snow clearing machine pumping a great plume of snow that was drifting across the track. As I brought my binoculars back down to the track, I saw her Ladyship’s luge come bouncing down, empty. It scittered down the remainder of the run, bouncing off the track on the final sharp bend. “Where the hell is she?” bellowed Harry to no one in particular.
The cloud of snow from the snow blower started to settle. As it did so we saw two figures skiing with a stretcher between them. They swept around a mound of snow. Moments later from behind the mound, an all white Allouette helicopter, with red crosses on the side, lifted off. Harry watched it fly away down the valley with a furious look on his face.
“That was lucky,” I said, “those medics being there. She must have had a nasty crash.”
“Lucky, nothing,” said Harry. “That was no accident and they were no medics. Lady Marchmont’s been kidnapped. The only problem is that it wasn’t by us.”
Not surprisingly, Freddie was furious. It was bad enough having this happen, the fact that he was in the middle of interviews for the sales manager role – a charade he resented because he’d already decided who he thought would be best for the job – didn’t improve his mood.
“Nobody picks up our targets under our noses. Get it sorted out will you,” he’d bellowed as we’d spoken to him on a conference call later that day. “Harry, I’ll get Elly to go through with you and Rick what you think has gone wrong this time.” Harry and I looked at each other. He obviously wasn’t looking forward to that conversation and after what Clegg had said to all of us following the Brian business neither of us liked to think what might happen if we didn’t succeed.
For me it was just another complication. I’d tried to talk to the Doc about Rachel but I hadn’t been able to reach her. Sukie hadn’t been there either.
Harry sat on the hillside munching on a ham roll. To anyone passing by we looked like a couple of back packers out for a hike. Harry put down his food and picked up the binoculars. The grounds of the hospital lay almost directly below us, clearly visible through a gap in the pine trees. He seemed remarkably relaxed given the strength of the telephone call he’d had with Elly. At one point he’d been holding the phone a foot from his ear. In the end though she’d been content to let Harry get on with it.
“She’s done this stuff,” Harry had said. “She knows you can’t cover every base although she did suggest that we might have guessed something was wrong from the debacle at Marchmont Hall, which is fair enough.”
“How’s Freddie,” I said. “He didn’t seem himself when we all got together last week.”
“Bogged down in admin and irrelevancies as he calls it. He’s got some problems with one of the other businesses which he can’t hand off. They’ve kept him out of touch with our stuff and he doesn’t like it. Talking to Elly, he’d much rather be out on operations or running a few accounts.”
Harry swept the binoculars across the view before bringing them back to the hospital. “Yepp, he’d much rather be here. That,” he said, “is what I’m interested in.” He passed the binoculars to me and gestured to a small outbuilding about 50 metres from the main hospital block.
I looked myself. There didn’t seem to be anything to distinguish it from any of the other half dozen or so buildings around the complex. “I’m not sure what I’m looking for,” I said handing the binoculars back.
“It’s in the right place,” said Harry taking them and peering down again. “The lads have scoped it out and its definitely being used for something illegitimate. It’s what we’d use but we need a better indication than… Hang on.” He sat up still looking through the binoculars. I could see a figure moving across the yard between the hospital and the outbuilding. The figure was a woman, I could tell that much from where I was. All in white, presumably one of the nurses. She looked as if she was carrying something. She stopped at the door and after a short pause went in. “That’s good enough for me,” said Harry. “That’s where we’ll find her ladyship.”
“Harry,” I said, “I’m happy to bow to your judgement but I imagine there plenty of nurses going backwards and forwards between the hospital and the other buildings.”
“You didn’t see it, did you? Before she went in?”
“I saw she stopped but that’s about it. You’re the one with the binoculars.”
“Well, it was a nurse all right. Carrying a tray with a meal on it.”
“It’s lunch time, Harry.”
“Sure, but why do you suppose she stopped to put her mask on before she went into the building?” I saw what he meant.
The worst possible thing if you are running an operation like the Hospital, or the Prep Centre come to that, is to get locked in to too much of a routine. But I guess with the Swiss, clockwork is what you’d expect. Every two hours a nurse would come across to the outbuilding and put on her mask and go through the door. A few minutes later another one would leave. They were on turn and turn about. Nobody else seemed ot be taking much interest. It didn’t take too much thought to work out how we were going to get in.
There was Harry, two heavies and me. We waited until dusk. One of the heavies, grabbed the nurse as she opened the door. The other was through the door ready to deal with the nurse that was already inside. By the time I’d followed Harry through the door. One nurse was struggling in the arms of the first heavy, trying to breath with one of his arms locked around her chest and one hand across her mouth. The other, sitting beside her captive’s bed, still wearing her medical mask, was staring at the barrel of our other heavy’s pistol.
Angela Marchmont was on the bed, swathed from head to foot in bandages like an Egyptian mummy she couldn’t move but she was able to see what was happening and put up a spirited mmmphing of welcome from behind the strapping that covered her mouth. Harry walked across to her. “We’ll soon have you out of here, your Ladyship,” he said. You could see the relief in her eyes. It was a shame that her rescue wasn’t going to turn out quite like she was expecting.
We tied the two nurses up, gagged them, and
dumped them on the bed. That’s the great thing about hospitals, plenty of
bandages and sticky tape around the place. They were wriggling and squealing
quite a bit but I guess that was as much because of what their paymasters would
be saying to them later when they found that her Ladyship was missing. We
lifted Lady M onto a wheeled trolley and got her out of the building. Her
captors might have been efficient at collecting her but security around the
hospital was rotten. Two others of our team drove an ambulance in and around to
where we were. We loaded her up and were on our way in moments. Nobody seemed
bothered. Lady M seemed to think we should be letting her out of her bandages.
We weren’t convinced that was of any value. She started struggling around where
she was laid out on the bench of the ambulance. Harry slipped a hypodermic
needle into her arm and gave her a shot of sedative. It calmed her down quite
quickly. Now we just had to get her back to the
We got as far as the airport. We had a DH104 Dove waiting for us, one of the old Flying Doctor aircraft, ancient but robust. Harry drove the ambulance into the hangar. As he and I got out, pistol shots rang out, flattening the ambulance’s tyres. Four heavies emerged from behind the Dove. They seemed to be encouraging us to surrender our cargo. I could see that Harry was sizing up the options. I’m no professional but none of them looked good to me.
Then I heard Freddie’s voice ring out. “I’m not sure that you have this situation quite as much under control as you think, Constanza.”
A dark haired woman emerged from the Dove, clutching one of Harry’s operatives against her as a shield and holding a gun to her head.
“I think we both need to sit down and have a talk.” I followed the sound of Freddie’s voice. He was standing on a gantry at the end of the hangar with three of our heavies all armed with machine pistols and another woman held at gunpoint. “It’s really not a great idea if we let off firearms with all this aviation fuel around and I think we both might end up losing more than we gain.”
“Can I trust you, Clegg?” the woman from the plane called.
“No, of course not. Any more than I can trust you. All we can do is to trust the other to act in their own best interests. So why don’t we talk about that.”
As a gesture of conciliation, Clegg came down from the gantry. The situation unwound slowly. Constanza let her captive go; Clegg released his. The heavies contrived to put their guns on safety simultaneously. Harry and I relaxed a bit. I was glad. I’d never fancied my chances in the middle of a Matrix style exchange of fire. I wasn’t sure I could move that slowly.
“Your plane or mine?” asked Clegg.
“Let’s use mine,” said Constanza, gesturing to a Mystére that stood near the door to the hangar. “We can leave her ladyship in the ambulance until we’ve decided what’s happening.” Harry and I followed Clegg and Constanza onto the ‘plane.”
All four of us sat around the board table that took up most of the forward cabin of the Mystére. “We might as well be civilised about this,” said Constanza, pressing a button on the table. “I assume you gentlemen would like a drink.” Clegg nodded and we concurred.
An oriental looking girl appeared. Clad in a tight fitting grey silk cheungsam she looked slightly familiar. Constanza invited us to order drinks and the girl bowed and took her leave. It was only when she returned carrying the loaded tray that I realised she reminded me of Rebecca. I watched her closely. She gave no indication of recognition.
As she left, Constanza turned to me. “Have you met that slave girl before?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “She looks very like a girl we sold as a flight attendant to one of the American buyers. She went as one of a pair. Maybe nine months ago. But she was Caucasian, not Asiatic.”
Constanza laughed. “My surgeon would be flattered to hear you say that. It’s
probably the same girl. I bought her
from Jesper. Narod Jesper, you know? He’d been using her on his aircraft but
he’s decided to give it up now. He’s taken to the water, bought himself a very
comfortable yacht, claims it’s more relaxing. Less dangerous.
Anyway he had two flight attendants surplus to requirements and I’d just taken
delivery of the Mystére.
He was keen to sell quickly. I got them cheap. I’d always wanted a Chinese
slave though. Trouble is they’re getting expensive. It’s got worse since the
Brits moved out of
“We’re more interested in sorting out our current collection programme than actually taking your redundant stock off your hands, Constanza,” Clegg interrupted, a touch irritably. “Can we get on with it?”
“Of course, Freddie,” Constanza apologised.
“Now how are we going to sort out the question of the unfortunate lady in my ambulance?”
“Snatched from my hospital!”
“Lifted from the middle of an operation we had set up. Yes, I am sure we can both put up an excellent case for first come first served. Can I ask why you were targeting her ladyship?”
“Pure speculation on our part,” Constanza admitted. “My research teams had noticed her as a possible a while back. She’s over here skiing and tobogganing a lot. Almost an honorary Swiss. Speaks French, German and English. Plus a genuine milady. There’s a few buyers over in the old eastern that block that cling to the idea of keeping the aristocracy in their place and would like to get something like her. And you?”
“Well she’s down against a specific commission. I must admit we’d find it embarrassing to have to go back to the client. He’s very much of the view that she’s the ideal solution to his requirement. Perhaps I can suggest a compromise.”
“Suggestions, Freddie, are always welcomed,” said Constanza.
Freddie looked thoughtful for a moment.
“Here’s what I propose. We’ll take her ladyship back with us but we’ll provide
you with an equivalent. British aristo, multi-lingual, physically
attractive of course. We’ll cover the collection costs,
you cover the shipment costs from our UK Prep Centre. We’ll do the prep and
orientation for you at your expense if you like or you can do your own. We’ll
ship to any location in mainland
Constanza looked thoughtful. “Timescale?”
“One month not including prep if you use our research.” Harry looked pained. Freddie went on. “If you want to give us one of your short list then we may have to research again. Could be longer.”
“That sounds agreeable. There’s no
particular need for us to have Marchmont
specifically. I’ll trust your taste in women, Clegg. We’d intended to ship from
the
“Yes, we know. We nearly trod on the toes of your team at Marchmont Hall.”
“Except that she got out before either of us turned up.”
“Ha!” said Clegg. “Bloody product. Can’t rely on it until you’ve got the ropes on the wrists.” He picked up his glass. “Can I take it we’re agreed?”
“Yes,” said Constanza.
“In fact I’d like to talk to you about some other
“Well let’s talk about it,” said Clegg. “You’ve got better access to the Eastern European markets than we have. I’m sure there could be areas for cooperation.”
Clegg was insufferable on the flight back, telling Harry how he should get out on operations more but in some ways I was happy to see it. He always seemed better in the thick of things than working his way through the office politics. I could see Harry wasn’t happy with the idea that Freddie might get more involved in the sharp end but at least Freddie didn’t seem too worried about the things that had gone wrong. Harry had told me about the post mortem he was planning when we got back. I guessed that Freddie would let him get on with it.
I was glad things were working out. It meant I could get back and see how Rachel was.
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