The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

to the back. There was a hum of reggae coming from behind the closed windows. He looked back down the embankment at the wrecked hire car. It was already damp from the rain. He hadn’t even noticed that it had started raining. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

34

 

He had taken two separate elevators. Not because of counter surveillance measures, but because one lift terminated on the twelfth floor and the other started on the other side of the building which became 12A. It had taken the man far too long to discover that the gentle rise in gradient from 12 to 12A was indeed an entire floor. The lift, when he found it indicated fourteen as the next floor. Floor thirteen did not exist. The lift rode up to the thirty-sixth floor and on the ride up, he Googled on his smartphone and discovered that many architects omit a thirteenth floor for reasons of superstition. Being an international banking institution, and with customers or investors from every culture, religion and political persuasion, he supposed the bases had been covered. He felt a little foolish, perhaps even out of his depth. His task was so different from what he had trained for, what he had vowed to do.

He was a Pakistani by culture and a Muslim by both birth and belief, but he had been born in the United Kingdom. He was as western as the white people he went to school with, worked with, socialised with. He had visited Pakistan, but not as a tourist. He was a different person to the people he grew up with. He had seen conflict. Seen the deaths of his comrades, and in turn, had delivered it to their enemy. He was a driven man, had to have been to achieve what he had in less than a decade. And now, after years as a foot soldier, he was in a higher order. His tasks and responsibilities had changed. He was destined for great things.

He had been given the key by his contact. When he reached the top floor, he skirted the building, walking beside its high windows – a wall of glass – and took in the panorama of the city. It looked down on many buildings and up to a few, but the view was not his reason for being there. He took the key out of his pocket and approached the plain-looking door built into one of the gables. There was no handle on the door, no name plate either. It could well have been a circuit cupboard. He inserted the key into the single, discreet-looking lock and nudged the door inwards. A motion sensor light illuminated the concrete staircase. He stepped in and closed the door behind him. There were twenty-four steps and he took them cautiously. At the top, another door, identical to the previous one, stood between himself and the roof. The key would work on this door too. His contact had assured him of this. It was a service master key, and covered every lock in the building.

The roof was overlooked by three buildings in its immediate vicinity. It was approximately level with three more. This wouldn’t be a problem. There were ventilation outlets, air-conditioning units and what he assumed were storage units for maintenance and window washing equipment. Enough to keep someone out of view. The roof in turn overlooked many buildings.

The man walked to the edge. A wall of about a metre high acted to protect workers from the drop. It was interspersed with glass panels. The glass panels were fixed with aluminium couplings. Each panel edge left a gap of four inches. He bent down, then decided to lie down flat on his belly. He sighted an imaginary rifle. Used his left hand to hold the fore-stock of the rifle steady, his right wrapped around the pistol grip of the imaginary rifle. He sighted along the imaginary barrel. In his mind’s eye, he used the crosshairs to centre on his target. He could only see the window. He took out a pair of compact field glasses from his jacket pocket and could clearly see Gipri Bashwani at his desk some two-hundred metres away. The glass was lightly smoked, but in the fading light the lack of direct sunlight made the interior of the office visible. Bashwani was holding court with three executives. The world’s wealthiest man was going about his business without a care or worry in the world.

35

 

Cape Town

South Africa

“You’re going to owe MI6 more than a thank you after this.”

Caroline leaned back in the seat of the Toyota and forced herself not to relax. She wanted to sag in the seat, close her eyes and breathe deeply. But she had been in situations where to relax was to lose your edge, and she wasn’t about to let down her guard until she boarded the plane and ordered the first of many gin and tonics.

“Thanks, Ryan,” she said. “Thanks for handling everything back there.”

Ryan Beard nodded. He checked his mirrors almost continuously. Caroline still had the assault rifle in the footwell. There were only four rounds left in it, and as Beard had reminded her, she had lost the Sig 9mm pistol he had given her earlier and they did not know if there were more people out there who wanted her investigation halted. At any cost.

The truth was, there was undoubtedly someone out there who wanted to stop her, but whether they could get their assets into play before Beard could get her to the airport was another question. He certainly drove like he intended to get her there before anybody had the chance to regroup and redirect their resources.

Caroline had used the mobile phone of one of the onlookers at the scene to call Simon Mereweather. She knew the number by heart and had waited for the MI5