Rock Hard

CHAPTER 1

MALI

The helicopter had gone on ahead but they could still hear the throbbing of its rotors somewhere behind the rocky rise to their left.

It was an M-24 Hind, a Krokodil. The machine had a fearsome arsenal of rockets and machineguns but it was a military fossil of the Cold War provided to the country’s tiny air force by Bulgaria.

Sous-lieutenant Thierry Levavasseur thought it a miracle that the helicopter was still flying. Most of their air force was grounded due to lack of spares or expert maintenance.

Still, he should not complain. This was what he had wanted, why he had joined the Régiment Étranger de Cavalerie. Serval, the latest Opération Extérieures gave him the chance to lead, the opportunity for real combat experience. It would look good on his service record.

And it would impress Sylvie. She was the child of a service family, had grown up with the tales of uncles and older cousins who had fought for France. The stories excited her. And now he had some of his own to tell.

Levavasseur gripped the turret ring of the AMX-10RC. The wheeled reconnaissance vehicle with its 105mm gun was bouncing like a fairground ride as his driver, Doutreleau, eased it over the scorched rocks and boulders strewn across the dry river bed.

Levavasseur loved the desert. The silence. The isolation. The way a spectrum of vivid colours glided across the savage terrain, strengthening and fading as the brilliant arcing sun played with its rich pastel palette through the day.

Sylvie would like that. He could picture that strange light that would glow in her eyes when he told her the story.

Gripping the turret ring, Levavasseur half turned to look behind him. The two aging BTR-60 armoured personnel carriers bearing the local military were just about managing to keep up, bucking and lurching as their eight wheels bit the boulders, climbed, slammed down again.

The engine of one at the rear was still giving problems, thick grouts of diesel smoke belching from its exhausts.

As they ground on up the river bed Levavasseur wondered if he should take more photos. He already had an excellent collection on his digital camera, of the country and the men. Sylvie might enjoy them, both personally and professionally. She was in Paris, serving with the Direction du Renseignement Militaire.

But, then again, it might be more personal if he described his campaign in words when they were together again. More intimate.

He remembered, before his posting, their brief time together at Le Lavandou, the rich sparkling blue of the Mediterranean, exploring the small coves and hillsides dressed with pine trees, mimosa, eucalyptus and palms.

The AMX halted and backed up as Doutreleau manoeuvred round a large bolder. They were close to the end of the wadi now.

***

The fear was everywhere. An elderly man’s liver-spotted hand went white where his wife gripped it. A father put his arm around his daughter who pressed her face into his shoulder. Somewhere a baby was crying.

A whining thud was followed by a juddering that sent out a ripple of gasps like a pebble in a pond. May Daniels smiled at Danny but there was no conviction in her eyes. Danny gave her a nod and a grin and she seemed to relax a little.

He looked around, hard to tell what was happening. There was something white out there. Must be a building. Couldn’t be sure.

Another judder. Another ripple of gasps.

Danny looked down. He could see the deck of a ship for a fleeting second. Black paint streaked with rust. A white face looking upward, shielding his eyes.

The baby was screaming now. The young girl was whispering demands for urgent assurances from his father. The elderly man laid his other hand on top of his wife’s and squeezed.

The juddering got worse, the whining louder. They were swaying. Somewhere something fell down. Most of them were startled when the big bang came, followed by a ragged rumbling.

They were pushed forward against their seatbelts as the brakes and reverse thrusters slowed the easyJet Airbus but most heads went back against the headrests with relief.

As the aircraft slowed to taxying speed the passengers burst into clapping and cheering.

Told you it would be fine, said Danny.

May Daniels smiled with warmth, showing two perfect rows of white dentures.

Thank you. I know it’s silly but that part, the landing, it always worries me.

Danny pointed past her, out of the window.

See that barrier over there, the people and vehicles. That’s what I told you earlier. Winston Churchill Avenue crosses the runway. They have to close the road into Spain every time an aircraft lands.

Mrs Daniels looked out of the window and chuckled.

Well I never.

GIBRALTAR

Templeton stood by the window, arms behind his back, eyes narrowed against the brightness. It was an excellent view, that had to be admitted. The quarters, a two-bedroom en suite flat, was quite comfortable and adequate for the job in hand, discreet. The food was something of a disappointment but these minor irritations had to be borne.

Just showed he was getting old. He exercised regularly, cycled, walked. The results of his medicals were always positive, apart from the usual caveats about alcohol.

It was hard to believe he had spent most of his professional life like this, travelling, living out of suitcases, everything in his life subordinate to the job in hand.

All the arrangements for his visit had been handled efficiently and with some degree of thought. Yet he stilled pined for the Chelsea flat. It met his simple needs, housed his books and allowed him easy access to the theatres of the West End.

And he found himself missing the cottage in Bledlow Ridge, mist on the back paddock in the morning, the silent dragon wings of red kites soaring, walking the dogs along the Ridgeway trail.

Templeton had been surprised at how badly the divorce had hit him. One of the few bedrocks of his life had suddenly dropped away from under him. He blamed that for the drinking. That’s what he told the medics anyway. But he’d always enjoyed the convivial glow of alcohol long before Eleanor had walked out.

Perhaps, following her departure, it had been the certainty and stability of the flat and the cottage that went some way to filling the gap.

After their short and surprisingly vicious legal clash, he and Eleanor now enjoyed a relationship that was cordial if cool.

They had been drifting apart for a long time before the final break. With his work and her charity commitments they had grown different interests, different friends.

Templeton had struggled with some aspects of his sudden solitude. An old friend, Gerald at the golf club, had proposed a solution, provided a telephone number. Well-educated girls, clean, discreet. Templeton had recoiled at the idea. But he still had the number tucked away somewhere.

Now, Templeton wanted to settle this business and return to his books and the red kites.

He looked up toward a gentle tap on the door.

Come in.

The young man in the dark grey suit glided across the room holding a buff folder. It intrigued Templeton how Rao managed to move so silently. He reached for the folder, flipped it open, speed-read the first sheet.

What’s the latest on David Hicks?

Rao shook his head.

Nothing new. The man appears to be under increasing pressure. There’s his drinking. And we think he may be addicted to painkillers. His behaviour is becoming more unpredictable. I’m concerned that it might jeopardise his position.

Which, in turn, said Templeton, would close our window into the organisation.

That’s what concerns me, said Rao.

Anything new on Dynamo?

We hope to have an update later this afternoon.

Templeton snapped the folder shut and handed it back.

Keep me posted.

As Rao glided silently from the room Templeton turned back to the window and the view. Perhaps, if it could be managed, he might slip away for a few hours in the hope of a little bird spotting. Perhaps, if he was lucky, a Booted Eagle or Griffon Vulture.

MALI

It was only as Levavasseur began to relax very slightly at the thought of the open country beyond the rise that he realised something had been troubling him.

He searched the recent images in his brain but couldn’t think what it might have been. He patted the pocket of his combats in search of his cigarettes.

Levavasseur lit a Gitanes and raised the binoculars hanging around his neck. As the AMX bumped and ground its way up the slope he scanned the higher ground to left and right. What was it he had seen that was worrying away at the back of his mind?

He keyed his headset microphone and spoke to the driver, Doutreleau.

Five hundred yards to his left the steel tube of a rocket propelled grenade dropped a fraction, resting on the stony ledge.

Another was lowered, then a third. The men crouched in the cleft of the rocky incline looked to their left and right, communicating silently. One exhaled slowly and loudly as the tension leaked out of him.

The last to react was the man on the extreme left of their line. The leader saw this and hissed a command.

The man on the left took a last look at the young blond Frenchman enjoying his Gitanes. He could see every detail of his face beneath the glowing red brown of a new tan on pale skin.

Reluctant, he took his eye from the scope and lowered the sniper rifle against the rock ledge.

They waited. They would wait until the sound of engines had died and then they would wait longer. They were to take no risks.

When the leader deemed it safe they would move on, towards the secret paths of the desert, a place where borders were lines on maps.

They would move cautiously and with great care, invisible. Nothing must be done that might endanger Ar Risella, the message they brought.

CHAPTER 2

GIBRALTAR

With all his kit in a shoulder bag, Danny was one of the first off the flight. Mrs Daniels said she was meeting her son, that she could manage her cabin case, but Danny took it anyway.

My son John lives here now, she said. He works for an online gaming company. He and Jenny, that’s his wife, they have a lovely life here but it means I see so little of George, that’s my grandson. He’s only three but they shoot up so fast at that age, don’t they?

Danny nodded.

Have you been to Gibraltar before? asked Mrs Daniels.

Briefly.

And did you enjoy it?

I didn’t see a lot of it. I was underground a lot of the time.

Underground? How extraordinary. Are you some sort of engineer?

Used to be a soldier. The rocks riddled with tunnels like a Swiss cheese. We trained in them for Afghanistan.

A new light brightened Mrs Daniels’s flight-weary eyes.

Really, how interesting.

They passed quickly through the Border And Coastguard Agency passport check and into arrivals. Mrs Daniels spotted a young man waving, thanked Danny hurriedly and set off at an excited trot, towing her case.

Beyond the barrier stood a bunch of young guys, heads shaved, big Adam’s Apples, pale faces pitted with spots. They were cocky, nervous, off on an adventure. Keen to be recognised for what they wanted to be, they stood grouped around an older man, their mentor.

They barely fitted their Army uniforms. Danny knew they were off to the UK for training. Once, a very long time ago, he’d been just like them. He wished them a silent good luck.

He paused to stretch. Fitting someone of his height into an airline seat was never easy but at least the narrow shaft of the prosthetic leg below his left knee gave him a little more wriggle room.

The roar stopped movement across the arrivals hall. Heads turned.

"DANAAAAAY!!!

Pogo rushed up, wrapped Danny in fierce muscles, tight fists pressed hard against his shoulder blades. Danny reeled back from the impact.

Startled passengers were still watching when they separated, holding each other at arms’ length, grinning.

How long’s it been, Danny boy?

Too bloody long, mate.

I can’t believe it, said Pogo, breathless, drinking in every detail of Danny. In turn, Danny studied his friend. The face was the same but the cheeks were fuller, the neck padded. On top of the muscles of his shoulders and chest he carried a lot of fat and the buttons fighting to hold his shirt closed across his stomach were losing the battle. Pogo’s head was shaved and stubble smeared his chin. His eyes were red and tired.

They clung to each other for a long time. Neither finding the words, unable to guarantee steady voices. Then they pulled apart.

You look like shit.

Pogo grinned.

Same old charmer, eh, Danny.

He looked the new arrival up and down again, pulled him in for another hug, clinging hard.

Hey, brother. It’s good to see you. Sorry to hear about your mum.

She had a good run.

So how are you doing?

Oh, you know, said Danny, waggling his false left leg. One foot in the grave, as they say.

Pogo’s bellowing laugh drew more startled looks. They broke their grip, held each other at arm’s length to look again. Danny bounced a playful punch off Pogo’s stomach.

Last time we were carrying seventy pounds of kit. Looks like some of us still are.

You know how it is when you’re out from under all that training, that discipline, Danny.

No, Pogo, I don’t. And I don’t need to be a detective to see who ate all the pies.

Sod the pies, said Pogo. Time to get the beers in.

MOSCOW

The man looked at the contacts page of his phone for a long time before he pressed the dial key. Even as he did so he looked around to ensure he was alone. Ridiculous, but necessary.

It was always the tiniest detail that you overlooked which killed you. This situation demanded the utmost caution.

He had received information through his extensive network of contacts and confirmed it through other sources. As always, discreetly, invisibly, but there was no such thing as being too careful.

The threat was real, very real. He had sent warning emails, three of them. They had not bounced back but there had been no response. None.

The man had given it much thought and still could not be sure why he felt the need to help but he would do it anyway.

As he pressed the dial key he looked down at the message on his phone, Calling Danny Lancaster...

GIBRALTAR

Danny winced at the brightness as he stepped out of the smoked glass cube of the new terminal building into the sunlight.

Pogo walked on a dozen paces before he realised Danny wasn’t with him and turned.

What’s up?

Danny was staring across the runway and up at the soaring wall that was the north face of the Rock. Pogo moved to stand beside him.

Pretty bloody impressive, eh?

Didn’t get to see much of the place last time we were here.

No, but you’ve got all the time you want now. Gib’s like Marmite, mate, you love it or you hate it. Me, I love it. You never get tired of waking up to a view like that.

Danny studied the huge tilting cone of rugged Jurassic limestone, topped by communications masts and dwarfing the buildings at its foot. It sloped away to the right in waves, down towards the town, under a covering of coarse green foliage.

The pitted and wrinkled surface of the grey cliff looked like the hide of an old bull elephant. The sun, high in a clear blue sky dotted with the odd puff of cumulus, threw angled shadows across the weathered face.

Danny pointed.

Those the gun ports?

Pogo squinted against the brightness at a line of ragged punctures.

That’s them. They built a tunnel and knocked firing ports in the cliff during the sieges to shoot down on the Spanish when they got uppity.

As Danny looked closer he could see the sheer rock face was pocked with gun ports from many wars. Pogo jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

That’s why the Spanish border town’s called La Linea, The Line.

Pretty impressive.

It is but there’s plenty of time for that later. Let’s get you a bed and a beer.

***

Templeton’s eyes snapped open at the touch. He looked up to see Rao bending over him, two fingers gently tapping his arm.

This time Rao didn’t need his stealth skills. Templeton had been sitting back in the room’s single armchair, headphones in place, wrapped up deep in Bach’s Air from his orchestral suite No3 in D Major.

Irritated at being surprised, he pulled the headphones down around his neck.

What is it, Rao?

A development, a new player.

Bach was forgotten as Templeton sat upright in the armchair.

Who is he?

We’re checking now. Hicks picked him up from the airport. We’re in contact with Border And Coastguard. I hope to have more within the hour but I thought you’d want to be notified immediately.

Yes, let me know as soon as you have something concrete.

***

They walked across the airport runway along Winston Churchill Avenue, Pogo pausing to snap a picture of Danny, broad expanse of pale shimmering concrete behind him with the sea beyond.

Pogo led the way into town and up Main Street, busy with shoppers and tourists in search of tax-free bargains. They turned up a narrow lane and through a door into a passageway that led to a cool shaded courtyard lined with trellises heavy with climbing plants.

It’s an OK place, this, said Pogo. I’ve used it a few times myself.

He found a young guy behind the bar off the courtyard and followed him up to a room on the first floor. The doors of the rooms led off an open walkway of whitewashed walls. Danny’s room was neat and clean. The crisp bedding gave off a freshly-laundered smell.

This’ll do nicely, he said.

Danny felt a simmering of excitement. It was the start of an adventure, if only a small one. It had been a while since he’d got out of Brighton and the only times recently had been on cases.

Now he was away from his detecting work, away from the flat where his mum died, away from any responsibilities.

He was in the sunshine, in a place he didn’t know well, with one of his best mates. Pogo read the look on Danny’s face and clapped his hands together.

Right, let the games begin.

BRIGHTON

It wasn’t sick, not really. It wasn’t ghoulish. It was peaceful, beautiful. But people probably wouldn’t understand, might think it weird, so she never told anyone.

A light breeze was blowing off the sea, stirring the sounds of birdsong that floated down from the big trees.

She walked slowly, following an asphalt path varicosed by tree roots. Old memorials were scattered across the grassy hillside. Shiny marble. Weather-battered stone. Inscriptions lost to the wind. Crumbling graves sliding into the earth like sinking dinghies.

The sprawl of graves spread over the hillside in a cluster of cemeteries straddling Bear Road up a steep incline topped by Brighton race course.

It was a vast suburb of the dead with better views across the city of Brighton and Hove than most of its living residents enjoyed.

As she approached the military section she spotted a green woodpecker worrying at a clump of earth. Beyond, crows stood like jet black question marks against the grass.

Emma Driscoll had first come here with Danny. He’d read something in Jubilee Library about war graves and had wanted to find them.

Danny had been schoolboy-keen, reeling off details. There were First and Second World War graves, Poles, Canadians and Australians, soldiers, sailors and airmen.

There was a 61-year-old Home Guard killed in the Blitz and a soldier from the Royal Norfolk Regiment who’d won a Victoria Cross in France. Near the Cross of Sacrifice there was row upon row of graves for men from St Dunstan’s, the centre for blind veterans at Ovingdean.

Emma paused by a small block of graves set slightly apart in the shade of a tree. The Germans. Flyers shot down and killed. That was what Danny had really wanted to find.

They were sparse memorials, name, date of birth, date of death beneath a single fat engraved cross.

Danny had memorised all the details. One was a decorated veteran of the Russian Front. His aircraft had crashed in a churchyard in Dyke Road. He had been found dead from a head wound. Hanging by his parachute from a nearby tree. Still wearing his Iron Cross.

Emma wondered about the others, once hated and feared, now forgotten in a meadow of birds and butterflies with fantastic views over the city.

She tried to remember what Danny had said but, to be honest, she hadn’t really been listening. He had said something about machine-gunning milk floats and playgrounds.

Had these men done that? Or were they just doing their job, hoping to get back to their families? What would their mums and dads think of their boy lying in this small patch of a foreign country?

Emma didn’t know much about wars. Well, you saw stuff on TV, Afghanistan, Syria, that sort of thing, but it was a long way away. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like. But that didn’t mean you didn’t have things in your own life that exploded in your face, even if they didn’t make the news.

She’d had a few of those. Right from school, she had wanted to meet a nice guy, get married and be normal. It was all she had wanted. Didn’t seem much to ask but it was important to her, different from life at home when she was a kid.

The first person she’d ever felt close to was her brother, Gary. He was good looking, a good footballer. Hopeless at school but he had no time for it because he was always chasing the next girl.

Then there was Jerry. He had been the first big love of her young life. He was a long-distance lorry driver, away more than he was home. But he always came back with little presents, make-up, chocolate, sometimes a fridge magnet of the place he’d been to if he was running behind schedule.

Gary had laughed at the fridge magnets but they seemed exotic to Emma, cities and ports, mysterious places she’d probably never see.

She lived for the sound of Jerry’s key in the lock. His face lighting up with that big chipped-tooth smile. Patting his jacket as he pretended he’d forgotten the present. Calloused hands cupping her face. Slipping that plastic comb from his shirt pocket to smooth his hair. Jerry was always proud of his hair.

The long waits between visits were torture. She remembered the day he set off for Liverpool. She never saw him again.

The pain had been physical. She tried to block it but sometimes it sneaked up on her. Now she could almost control the memory. But she still wondered sometimes why he insisted she call him Jerry, not Dad.

GIBRALTAR

Danny and Pogo opened the score with a couple of pints of Stella at The Angry Friar opposite The Convent, the governor general’s residence.

They found a seat outside on the square with a view of the brass cannon by the convent guardhouse and watched the world go by.

So, said Pogo. You’ve turned copper. Who’d have thought?

It’s just detecting, asking a few questions, solving the odd problem.

Pays well, does it?

Danny pulled a face.

Sometimes.

So tell me about your famous cases then.

Not much to tell.

Come on, I’m interested.

Well, one of the first was this guy, fancied himself as a politician, saviour of the nation, you know the sort.

Pogo nodded.

While he was busy shouting the odds his No2 was importing guns, Kalashnikovs.

What happened?

The politician ended up inside.

And the AKs?

Blown up.

Blown up?

Couldn’t leave them lying around.

Pogo let out a low whistle.

Tell us another.

I was asked to watch this musician, one of those old rock stars, big in the Seventies. When I had a look round his place, found him dead. Turned out someone was bumping off the band.

Pogo took a long slurp of his