Chameleon - A City of London Thriller Read online

CHAMELEON

  A City of London Thriller

  J Jackson Bentley

  ©Fidus Publishing 2013

  All rights reserved.

  Second Edition (Formatted for Tablets)

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Email us at: [email protected]

  Visit the company website below for information on current and future publications

  https://www.fidusbooks.co.uk

  Cover Design by Altered Images, photo by Tom Soper Photography altered and used under Creative Commons License Deed/ attribution and with written permission. https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomsoperphotography/

  Acknowledgements & Authors Note

  For authenticity, I have kept locations and places exactly where they appear in reality. Obviously, in any work of fiction, it is necessary to have fictional locations but, where this has been done, the fictional locations are situated in real places. If buildings or places are given a historic background then they exist and can be seen by walking around the city in which they are sited.

  I have taken very few liberties with the transport arrangements mentioned in the book, and most journeys can be travelled as described.

  I am grateful to the experts in gems, firearms, physical combat and security who freely and enthusiastically give their time to allow us authors to maintain authenticity.

  I reserve my most grateful thanks for Sue W, my editor, who has proof read and improved all of my books since Macmillan published my first book in 1994. She also re-read the book and formatted the text for tablets in 2013.

  Finally I acknowledge the assistance given by Fidus Books on taking the City of London Thrillers into electronic format for the Kindle.

  If you have a comment, criticism or just want to email me about this specific book you can also email me at [email protected]

  J Jackson Bentley, London.

  August 2013

  Prologue

  Vastrick Security, No 1, Poultry, London, Monday 10th January 9am.

  Dee exited Bank tube station and was immediately assailed by the bitingly cold wind. Banked snow still lay on the edges of roads and pavements, after many weeks of severe winter weather, but it was now deep frozen and granite hard. The ground underfoot was slippery where the occasional light rain had speckled the ground with water droplets which turned to ice on contact. She could feel the crunch of ice and frost under her boots.

  Luckily, Dee didn’t have far to walk. The office block accommodating Vastrick Security was less than a hundred yards away, but even that distance was a challenge in this, the coldest January since records began. Almost everyone was wearing scarves across their faces, and those that weren’t had frost forming on their cheeks where their expelled breath had frozen onto their skin before it could evaporate.

  The sky was dark grey and heavy laden with clouds the colour of granite. The winter solstice had passed just a couple of weeks earlier, and there seemed very little difference between the level of daylight today and that of the shortest day. At nine in the morning it was just beginning to grow light, and yet it would be dark again by four. The grey clouds meant that the light levels would remain subdued all day, keeping the streetlights illuminated almost constantly. Grey skies, grey weather, grey world.

  Dee looked both ways before crossing the street, and whichever way she looked it was as if Ansel Adams had taken a monochrome photograph of a city in winter. Most of the commuters looked as though they were wearing dark colours to match their dark moods. The occasional colourful outfit stood out like a beacon in this conservative area where neon was rare and the colours used for shop fronts were subdued.

  Dee entered the office building through the rotating doors and felt the immediate heat of the door curtain scorch her head. In the summer the door curtain would blow a wall of cool air across the entrance to stop the heat penetrating into the working areas. Today it was a wall of radiant heat that could have cooked a chicken. She passed through the invisible wall of heat and into the lobby area, which felt several degrees cooler than it was designed to be. Glass atria may be great to look at, but they don’t keep much heat in.

  Dee took the lift to the Vastrick Security offices. She had officially become a Vice President of Vastrick on the first day of January this year - mainly, she suspected, because she had managed to get herself shot three times on her last big case.

  When she stepped into the lobby she noticed that Andy was on reception duty. Andy was an investigator and so he was usually in the back office, but Dee guessed that the disruption to the roads and trains meant that some of their people would be working from home again. She was right; there were four backroom staff in the office, as well as one investigator and one close protection operative, other than Dee herself.

  Geordie, the other close protection operative, had been stuck in London since yesterday due to the failure of the trains to run from Kings Cross up to Newcastle, where he lived, and from which region he took his nickname. Everyone had called him Geordie for so long it was rare for anyone to refer to him by his real name, Pete Lowden, but everyone in the business knew who Geordie was, and as he didn’t mind, it really didn’t matter too much.

  Dee removed her coat, scarf, boots and other sundry outerwear. Replacing her boots with sensible flat shoes, she was dressed in grey trousers, red roll neck sweater and a black tailored jacket. If anyone had seen what she was wearing for underwear they would have found it amusing. She was wearing her new husband’s thermals, and had to admit that they kept her warm. At five feet eight inches tall, she was approximately the same height as Josh, her husband, and so the full-length leg of the white thermal leggings tucked nicely underneath her socks.

  The attractive young woman both missed and envied her new husband. He had been sitting by the pool at his five star hotel in Dubai enjoying Mediterranean style temperatures yesterday, when they spoke using the video service provided by Skype. He appeared to be enjoying himself far too much for her liking. But Josh wouldn’t be back for another three weeks. He was assessing the value of the damage incurred when a small shopping mall on Sheikh Zayed Road had been severely damaged by fire. The insurers were insistent that Dyson Brecht send out a senior loss adjuster, and Josh’s boss Toby had picked him. Dee would have gone along, too, if she hadn’t recently taken three weeks’ leave to go on honeymoon, and get shot.

  Dee was just settling into her desk and booting up the computer when Geordie came into the room. He was over six feet tall, muscular without an ounce of fat on him, with close-cropped dark hair. He was quite striking in his way. He had the rugged good looks that most women found appealing. He was dressed in his usual Chinos and Vastrick Polo top. Yesterday someone had asked him how he managed in the cold weather with just a polo shirt and a padded jacket. He looked at them with his piercing blue eyes and joked that he had encountered worse weather than this in the summer in Newcastle, which he then assured the London staff was just inside the Arctic Circle. He had said it with a straight face, and found it amusing that some of them actually believed it.

  “We have a walk in,” he said, with an economy of words that was typical of him. Despite his appearance he was quite shy around women, something that made him even more attractive to a lot of the female clients.

  “It might be a time waster who has no idea of our hourly rates, but bring them in to Conference room 1 and we’ll give them fifteen minutes,” Dee said. Geordie headed towards the reception area whilst she walked acr
oss the corridor into the conference room and switched on the lights.

  Dee was still asking housekeeping to send someone up to take orders for drinks when the ‘walk in’ stepped through the doorway. The woman was around Dee’s height, but her hair was stacked on top of her head and wrapped in a colourful scarf that contrasted well with the rest of her outfit. She was accompanied by a handsome middle-aged African man dressed in a business suit and tie; her husband, perhaps. Although she was heavily built - she was probably too big for a size twenty dress - she carried herself well. Her ebony skin shone with good health and the dark colouring of her eyes did nothing to conceal the intelligence that lay behind them. There was no hint of a smile, however, and Dee could see the tell tale signs of worry that had brought her to their offices.

  She was obviously a woman who believed in being direct.

  “Hello, Mrs Hammond,” she said, in an accent Dee placed somewhere in central Africa.

  “I am Victoria Hokobu and if you do not help me I fear I will be killed in the next seventy two hours.”

  Chapter 1

  Embassy of Marat, St James Square, London, Monday 9am.

  Martin De Souza sat quietly in the reception area of the Marati Embassy and wondered why this poverty stricken nation enjoyed one of the most exclusive addresses for an Embassy anywhere in London.

  If De Souza hadn’t been in the mining business he probably would not have had the slightest idea where Marat could be found on the map of Africa. He suspected that most of the world’s population were in the same boat. Could most Europeans go to a map of Africa and confidently point out Chad, Gabon, Guinea, Togo, the Central African Republic or Marat? He doubted it.

  When the Europeans ruled Africa in the late nineteenth century most of these little countries did not exist, they had different boundaries or different names. The area that now comprises Marat and the Democratic Republic of the Congo was once considered the personal property of King Leopold II of Belgium. Even when numerous tribal wars were being fought late in the 20th Century, in central Africa, nobody was fighting over the tiny mountainous land that was Marat.

  Not until De Souza’s father and uncle discovered Tanzanite in those central African mountains in the 1990s did anyone even seek political control of the country. Until then Marat had been run as a State Administered Region of the Congo, without its own formal government or elections, without an army and without indigenous police.

  The beautiful violet blue Tanzanite which was now heavily mined in Marat changed all of that. More expensive and far rarer than diamonds, Tanzanite was found in significant quantities, and suddenly fortunes were there to be made. De Souza Mining had calculated that there must be billions of dollars’ worth of Tanzanite in Marat.

  Within a year the UN oversaw elections, and after an expensive and brutal campaign, Benjamin Matista was elected president. He then proceeded to place his closest advisers in the roles of chief of police and head of the tiny Marat army. There were persistent rumours that Matista was a Somali and that he was not in fact born and raised in Marat, as he had claimed in the election campaign, but no-one questions the President too harshly when he controls the army and the police.

  A portrait of the President in an impressive uniform adorned the wall behind the reception desk. Also located in the reception area was a secure display of Tanzanite, which looked real to De Souza, and if so, the display would be worth over a million pounds if sold in Hatton Garden, a sum that would release tens of thousands of Maratis from poverty.

  The De Souzas were not in a position to complain, however. They had made a fortune from Marat with their exclusive mining rights. Unfortunately, whilst the President and his government had more money salted away than they could ever spend, they would continually tell the people that once the army and police were funded, along with the improvements to the roads and infrastructure; there was no money left for education and welfare, unless of course, the people of Marat would agree to work ever longer hours in the mines.

  Recent UN studies showed that the majority of Marat’s population were educated, fed and cared for by international aid and by humanitarian charities, an unacceptable situation for a country with great mineral wealth, but the UN had bigger problems elsewhere in Africa that demanded their urgent attention. The elected authorities who siphoned off the aid money, and, whose greed knew no bounds, whose consciences knew no shame, also sought to hinder the international community’s fight against Marati poverty.

  Martin De Souza felt grubby even dealing with these people who dined in London’s finest restaurants and lived in penthouse apartments, whilst their own ethnic groups or tribes starved and lived in squalor. In the opinion of Martin De Souza, it was only the fact that most of the country belonged to the same tribe as their leaders that made a descent into civil war was unlikely.

  “Hello. So good to see you again.” A giant of a man strode towards De Souza, extending his hand. He was over six feet tall, heavily built and girded in an impressively tailored suit. His hair was short; his teeth were as white as ivory and his skin was that rich dark brown hue that looks almost purple in the right light.

  “Jalou, how good to see you too,” De Souza managed to say before his companion ushered him out of the door, his huge strong hand in the square of the mining executive’s back.

  “Come, let us take a walk. It is such a wonderful day,” Jalou suggested. His African accent had a deep timbre that commanded respect.

  The man is out of his mind, De Souza thought, but didn’t say. It was well below freezing outside. Nonetheless, he braved the cold wind and the icy streets to follow the big diplomat to a corner coffee shop, where they both ordered and then sat down in easy chairs either side of a low table.

  The diplomat spoke first. “Martin, it is not good business to come into the Embassy unannounced. The Ambassador and his brother cannot be involved with our troubleshooting duties.”

  The Ambassador’s brother was the President of Marat.

  “I had no alternative, Jalou. The Hokobu woman has just landed at Heathrow Airport.” The Afrikaaner pronounced Hokobu as Huckooboo, just as the lady herself did.

  “This is not possible,” Jalou stated, shaking his head. “You have made a mistake. My contact in the British Security Services would have informed me.”

  “No mistake. I saw her for myself. She arrived from Bangui on a KLM flight, changing at Schiphol. My informant deliberately stood behind her at passport control and he overheard her say to the Border Agency Officer that her return journey was booked with KLM and that she leaves Friday evening. Luckily she is a loud woman, because my informant was obliged to eavesdrop from the yellow line five feet away from the passport desk. My opinion is that she had someone drive her across the border into the Central African Republic, so that you would not know she had travelled.”

  The news seemed to agitate the diplomat greatly.

  “This is very bad news. She was supposedly under virtual house arrest. She will now speak at the international conference on Thursday morning and will, at the very least, cast our government in a bad light. At worst she will persuade the Americans and British to send their aid by way of food, medicines and clothing rather than in cash. Then the foreign aid workers distributing the aid will spy on us, and our income streams will be interrupted.”

  “That need not happen, Jalou. You have the Chameleon here in London. You have used him before.”

  “Martin, we have just seventy two hours before she speaks. Even that cold hearted killer will not be happy with such an assignment.”

  “I think you underestimate the Chameleon, Jalou. Whilst we have no real idea who he is, we do know that with very little notice he killed the Israeli Minister of Culture when he was in Paris opening the Jewish Memorial Centre, despite the fact that the Mossad was guarding the minister. Victoria Hokobu has no such protection; she has just her husband to watch over her.”

  Jalou Makabate thought about the potential problems Mrs. Hokobu could cause and deci
ded that investing in the Chameleon was necessary and urgent, if a little expensive. The assassin usually demanded one million dollars per successful hit, and he always ensured that he was paid. The Chameleon’s clients had been told that the reason the Israeli Minister had been assassinated, and the Mossad embarrassed, had not been political. It was simply because the Mossad had refused to pay the balance of the fee for assassinating a Hamas leader. Whilst the Israeli cabinet made a huge fuss and complained to the international community that it was an unconscionable act of evil by Hamas, the Mossad knew the reality, but they weren’t saying. Good marketing for the Chameleon, and a certain way of ensuring that he did not suffer bad debts.

  ***

  Once he was alone, Makabate’s first phone call was to the Marati head of State Security, a fellow Somali, instructing him to pick up and question Vincent Utembo, the Hokobus’ head of security, immediately. Makabate understood very well that if he reported to the Ambassador before he knew the woman’s plans for her stay, and subsequently had a plan to prevent them, he would be punished for allowing her to make the journey. Makabate had no intention of being sent back to Marat, through no fault of his own, where they would soon have him living in a hut somewhere, supervising a mine.

  Once he had made his wishes known to the security chief in Marat he pressed the speed dial headed UKFO. Across London, in Thames House, a rarely used mobile phone rang. “Diplomatic Support Services,” a male voice announced rather uncertainly.

  “Hello, this is your friend at St James’ Place.”

  ***

  Maureen Lassiter was a spinster of a certain age, but she had certain desires. A middle class woman of her standing had no right knowing how to affect, and control, men in the way she did. Although relatively plain, she stayed fit and slim and she had practised her lascivious craft since her days at University. Consequently, few men had been able to resist her temptations, and fewer still had been in any way disappointed when they submitted to her charms.

  Nonetheless, she had learned to be careful with her office based affairs. Even now the outer office door was locked and the sliding sign on the door had been moved from Director: ‘Available’ to, Director: ‘Unavailable’. For additional security, the inner door between her own outer office and the Director’s inner sanctum was also latched from the inside. With luck, their illicit coupling would go unnoticed, as long as she muted her cries of satisfaction. Fully comprehending that an affair with a superior officer was never wise and could occasionally be dangerous, she simply could not help herself. This was especially true when that lover was in a position to exploit his government calling for personal financial gain. There was no doubt that Maureen enjoyed the thrill, and the risk of being caught, but she also enjoyed the beautiful garden flat in Richmond that she could never afford on her government salary without help from a regular top up from an account in the Isle of Man.