Inside Enemy Read online

  Praise for Alan Judd

  ‘John le Carré has no peer among contemporary spy novelists, but Judd is beginning to run the master close …’

  Daily Mail

  ‘Judd is a masterful storyteller, with an intricate knowledge of his subject and a sure command of suspense’

  Daily Telegraph

  ‘Rivetingly accurate’

  Observer

  ‘Judd has an infallible grasp of intelligence’

  Spectator

  ‘Belongs to the classic tradition of spy writing’

  Guardian

  ‘Alan Judd writes exceedingly well’

  Evening Standard

  ‘Judd keeps plot and action centre-stage … he has written a novel perfect for brightening up a drizzly winter Sunday’

  Mail on Sunday

  Also by Alan Judd

  Fiction

  A Breed of Heroes

  Short of Glory

  The Noonday Devil

  Tango

  The Devil’s Own Work

  Legacy

  The Kaiser’s Last Kiss

  Dancing with Eva

  Uncommon Enemy

  Non-Fiction

  Ford Madox Ford (biography)

  The Quest for C: Mansfield Cumming and the Founding of the Secret Service (biography)

  First World War Poets (with David Crane)

  The Office Life Little Instruction Book

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Alan Judd, 2014

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Alan Judd to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Hardback ISBN 978-1-47110-250-9

  Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-47110-251-6

  eBook ISBN 978-1-47110-253-0

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

  Typeset by M Rules

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  To John, Jan, Tom and Ben.

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  Prologue

  The clock repair shop closed early on Wednesdays. The keeper, in his forties with greying hair and gentle brown eyes, secured the door and window grilles with padlocks. The shop was the front room of a terraced cottage, with the back room as the workshop and a bath and toilet in an extension beyond. Upstairs were two rooms and a box room which the shopkeeper shared with a woman and her twelve-year-old son. That day, the boy was at school and his mother was out cleaning the houses of richer people. That suited the man’s purpose.

  Grilles were needed in that part of Hastings, up on a ridge away from the sea, although there was little in the shop for local thieves. They might think it had cash, but there was little enough of that. Businesses like his were always marginal but trade had slowed since he had learned it in prison, years before. Few people had mechanical watches or clocks worth repairing now and there were days when his only interruption was someone wanting a battery replaced. But that at least allowed him to get on with restoring antique timepieces he could still pick up cheaply in junk shops. In other towns, such establishments had long since elevated themselves into antique shops, but here they clung on amidst the rusting cars, boarded-up buildings and neglected dogs, serving a drab and poor population. The man sold his restorations in the auction rooms of Rye, Eastbourne, Lewes, even London, and increasingly on eBay.

  It was a living, just, though not one that would have paid for his two-year-old Triumph Sprint 1050 in the lock-up a mile or so away in the industrial estate. But no-one associated him with the 160 mph motorcyclist in his black full-face helmet and belted Belstaff Trialmaster jacket. A man needed something to supplement a meagre living, he would tell himself on rare occasions when he felt the need for self-justification. The bike had paid for itself already and the work he did with it added variety to life.

  It was unseasonably warm and bright that day, which made choice of cover easy. He put on a crumpled blue beach hat, white T-shirt, blue jeans and old trainers, carrying under his arm a rolled-up towel and small black rucksack. Outside the shop, where he could keep an eye on it, was his Ford Fiesta van, twelve years old and sufficiently scuffed not to stand out on that street. But the tyres were nearly new, the interior was spotless, it started instantly and ticked over quietly. Like all his kit, it was in good order

  He cruised into town, keeping to the speed limit, slowing before traffic lights, anticipating zebra crossings. In the underground car park beneath the promenade he chose a space in full view of two CCTV cameras. He got out without his hat, bought a ticket from the machine, returned, collected his towel and rucksack, locked his van, went a few steps, then returned for his hat. If the cameras were working they could not fail to register a man in no hurry, a relaxed man with nothing difficult or dangerous on his mind.

  He sauntered along the promenade towards the Old Town where the fishing boats were drawn up on the beach. Although it was autumn, the day was warm enough for a few young people to sit on the shingle and for children to play on the never-to-be-completed harbour groyne. The sea was calm and sparkling and the tide was in, with its usual offering of plastic detritus. There were even a couple of hardy aged swimmers, which also suited his purpose.

  He picked his way between the winched-up fishing vessels and the tall black net huts, stepping over wires and buoys en route to the public lavatory. There he entered a cubicle and emerged a few minutes later wearing brown corduroy trousers, a blue long-sleeved shirt and a black wig. His rucksack and other clothes he carried in a green Marks & Spencer’s bag.

  Walking briskly now, he bought a return ticket to the Silverhill industrial estate from the machine by the bus stop, paying cash. He got off outside a tyre-fitter, a car-parts warehouse and a block of flats behind which were two rows of lock-up garages with black doors. Some had cars, others the overspill of various businesses. Amidst the coming and going, loading and unloading, no-one heeded the man in the sober blue shirt who unlocked number seventeen and stepped quickly inside, lowering the door before switching on the light.

  Half the garage was filled with the long cases of absent grandfather clocks and other bits of usable wood. In the other half, beneath a black plastic sheet, stood the gleaming black Triumph, its battery connected to a trickle charger. He uncovered it, disconnected the charger, tested the ignition, then took a screwdriver from the toolbox on the floor and removed the number-plate. Next he went to the up-and-over door and unscrewed the reinforcing panel surrounding the lock. Beneath it, pressed against the inside of the door, were three alternative number-plates. He selected one, f
itted it, and hid the original with the others. Then he took off his wig and put on the boots, Belstaff and full-face helmet that hung from hooks on the wall. After checking the contents of the large pannier box and adding his wig to them, he opened the door and pushed the bike out. At the Silverhill traffic lights a BMW abruptly changed lanes, cutting in front of him and forcing him to brake hard. He did no more than wave his gloved finger once. When on a job he was a stickler for road manners.

  He headed out through Battle and after some miles turned off into the Weald, wooded country with narrow winding lanes, small farms and high hedgerows. He cruised on little more than tick-over until a series of tight bends where he turned off again into a single-track lane, which eventually became an unmade road leading to a farm. He cruised along that through a chestnut coppice and a meadow until a rutted earth track which took him left through a field and shaw into a smaller field of rough grass. On the far side was an old black barn, recently thatched and painted with black double doors approached by a brick step. The track led past it to a gate and stile, with a rising field beyond.

  The man parked his Triumph behind the barn, then took his time unzipping his jacket and removing his helmet and gloves. He looked about him, taking in the neglected apple trees down the slope in what had been a garden, the three beehives and the bramble-covered remnants of a ruined cottage. His gaze lingered on a post and rail pen to his right, with a small shed that looked like a pig-sty.

  He walked round to the front of the barn and swung open the doors. Inside it was dark and clean with a brick floor and sandblasted rafters. Around the walls were posters describing flora and fauna and in a corner were piled plastic chairs and a couple of tables. A notice explained that the owner had restored the barn for free public use. The man took a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and went outside to light up. On the small terrace was a round table with three plastic chairs. He rested his foot on one while he smoked, seemingly absorbed by the shallow grass-filled pond before him.

  After a minute or two he ambled down through the rough grass to the remains of the cottage, the walls just a couple of stones high now. When he had finished his cigarette he flicked it into the hedge and walked back up to his motorbike, keeping clear of the beehives. After another leisurely look round, he took a collapsible trenching tool from his pannier, climbed into the pen and ducked through the low door of the pig-sty.

  The floor was loose dry earth, with a few weeds. He knelt at the back, away from the door, and probed the earth with the pointed end of his trenching tool before beginning to dig. Within less than a minute he was brushing soil from the lid of the buried Army surplus ammunition box.

  Inside was a bundle wrapped in old jeans and a box of 12-bore shotgun cartridges, number 4 shot. Inside the jeans was a dismantled sawn-off shotgun, its brutally shortened barrels extending only just beyond the stock. He reburied the box, reassembled the gun, put it to his shoulder a couple of times, dismantled it again, wrapped it in the jeans, put the bundle in his pannier and rode back the way he had come.

  At the village of Bodiam he waited patiently in the short queue of traffic at the bridge over the Rother while two coaches pulled out of the National Trust car park by the castle. When the traffic moved he kept a steady pace out of the village before turning right. Two cars followed him. He continued all the way to the village of Sandhurst, noting without turning his head the cattle grid at the start of a gravelled drive, shortly before the 30 mph signs and the church. Reaching the village, he turned left as soon as the following cars indicated right. Once they were out of sight he turned round and headed back to the drive with the cattle grid.

  It led up a short steep hill to reveal, hidden from the road, a Georgian house with floor-to-ceiling ground-floor windows and a beach-pebble turning area in front. It overlooked a fenced paddock which fell away towards the lane below. The few grazing sheep ignored the motorcyclist weaving his way between the gravelled ridges and holes.

  He parked at the steps leading up to the wide front door. With his back to the house, he opened the pannier and assembled and loaded the shotgun but left it in the pannier, the protruding end of the barrel covered by the jeans. He took out a clipboard with a printed form and a handwritten address, pushed up his visor, mounted the steps and pulled the iron bell-pull.

  The door was opened by a tall middle-aged man with grey crew-cut hair and gold-rimmed glasses. He wore green corduroys and a thick rust-red shirt, open at the neck.

  The motorcyclist glanced at his clipboard. ‘Mr Line?’

  The man shook his head. ‘No, I am sorry.’

  ‘Mr C. Line? No-one else here of that name?’

  ‘There is no-one else here. I am Dr Klein. Is it possible there is some confusion?’ He spoke careful, accented English.

  ‘Maybe. If you check the address, sir, I’ll get the package.’ The man handed him the clipboard and returned to his motorbike.

  The man studied the form, looking up as the motorcyclist came up the steps towards him. ‘I am sorry but I do not understand. This form does not have my name or address and appears to be for applying for a refund from the railway—’

  He must have seen the gun, just, but would have had no time to react. The blast, point blank into his face, lifted him off his feet and flung him backwards into the hall. A clamour of rooks rose from the trees around the church and the sheep in the paddock scattered like minnows before reforming into a huddle, facing the house.

  The man did not bother to confirm death. He picked up the clipboard and pulled the door to with his gloved hand. He dismantled the gun, wrapped it in the jeans and tucked it and the clipboard neatly back in the pannier. Then he pulled down his visor and rode carefully back down the rutted track.

  Back in his garage with the door safely closed, he unplugged a pay-as-you-go mobile from its charger behind one of the clock cases and texted Job done . By the time he had finished covering the Triumph there was a reply which said Thank you . Collect as before after 2200 hrs.

  When the man got home he hung his dry towel and swimming trunks on the line in the back yard. The woman was back and the television was on upstairs, which meant her boy was also back. He called up to her. ‘Put the kettle on. I’m coming up.’

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ she called.

  ‘Went for a dip. Colder than I thought.’

  ‘All right for some.’

  ‘Bloody freezing.’

  Later that night, after she’d cooked for them, he said he’d had enough of television and computer screens and was going for a drink. She was ironing in one corner of the room and didn’t object to having him out of the way. They’d been together over a year now. It was about three minutes’ walk to his local pub where he read a Daily Mail someone had left and sipped at a pint of beer until the landlord called time. The place still adhered, more or less, to the old hours. He put his empty glass on the bar and called goodnight to the landlord, who was in the back somewhere. Once outside, he turned into the alleyway at the side of the pub and went into the Gents. He locked himself in the cubicle, lowered the lavatory seat, took off his shoes and stood on the seat to lift the top off the ancient cistern above. Taped to the underside was a fat package wrapped in black plastic. He replaced the lid, then sat on the lavatory and opened the package. The notes were used tens and twenties, the amount correct.

  He walked slowly back to his shop, the cash distributed between the two back pockets of his jeans. The sense of a job well done was always pleasing. He would get the woman a treat tomorrow, some sexy underwear, perhaps. That might please her. There hadn’t been much going on in that department recently. He would get the boy something, too. That would definitely please her; she’d want to show her gratitude.

  1

  ‘Just shows – while there’s death there’s hope. Right as usual, the old fraud.’ George Greene, the Foreign Secretary, chuckled, straining his checked shirt against his stomach. It was a grey day and he was sitting on the leather sofa in his unlit offic
e overlooking St James’s Park, one arm along the back and one plump leg crossed over the other. His audiences often failed to appreciate his quotations and allusions and he knew they were a political liability, since a reputation for cleverness was usually equated with arrogance. But he relished life too much to permit the sensitivities of others to interfere with what he enjoyed. ‘Disraeli, that is,’ he added. ‘It was he who said it. Can’t think of whom.’

  He looked at Charles Thoroughgood. ‘Your late and unlamented predecessor, Nigel Measures, must have been the first Chief of the Secret Service ever to be killed in a road accident, wasn’t he? And weren’t you and he rivals for his widow at Oxford? Now your wife, of course?’

  ‘Not exactly rivals but we all knew each other.’ The story was too complicated to explain briefly and Charles had long since given up trying. ‘But Sarah and I are now married, yes.’

  ‘So two-in-one, then? You inherit his job and his wife? Like Wellington and Napoleon’s mistress.’ It wasn’t a very precise analogy but it was good enough for George Greene.

  ‘If that’s a formal job offer, yes.’

  ‘And if that’s a formal acceptance, it is.’

  The two men grinned. They were relaxed with each other, having served together at the embassy in Vienna many years before when Charles was a junior member of the MI6 station and George a rising star in chancery. But he rose too fast for the constraints of the Foreign Office and left to begin a political career as speechwriter for the shadow Home Secretary. Now, after entering Parliament and enduring years in opposition, followed by two brief junior ministerial posts, he had at last plucked the plum he cherished.

  Charles was relaxed, too, with the other half of George’s audience, Angela Wilson, the Foreign Office Permanent Secretary. Clever, like George, but without his careless joviality, she had overlapped with them both in Vienna on her way to the top of the tree. She and Charles had once hovered on the brink of an affair, or so it had seemed to him. Looking at her now, a soberly dressed woman in her fifties with grey hair cut severely short, he couldn’t help wondering whether it would have changed either of their lives. He had no regrets, and doubted she did. He was sure she wouldn’t even remember it as a hovering. She certainly gave the impression she would have no time now for such frivolity.