Within an hour of Mark and Pablo parting company, Mark had reached a rocky outcrop under the castle. Light was fading, and the temperature was falling. Mark used his binoculars to scope the castle walls to look for a way in when something glinted in the fading sun. Mark’s first instinct was to focus on it but then he saw the quick muzzle flash of a sniper rifle and ducked as the bullet chipped the rocks to the side of him. Hitting the deck hard, his first thought was that Lundon’s henchmen had followed him here and that they guy following him in Nazaret Harbour had found out their location. Mark crawled to a better vantage point and within two moves, had fixed up his rifle and was scoping the rocks where the muzzle flash came from.
Something caught the corner of his eye and he rolled, mid-air, behind a rock just in time for another bullet, then another to ping off the surrounding rocks. Mark’s blood was pumping now, and he realised he was pinned down.
‘What a bugger I didn’t bring any grenades with me!’ he thought.
He waited for a moment, correctly assuming the shooter was reloading, and made a run for it. His way was pounded by automatic gunfire and he realised either the shooter had NOT reloaded but merely changed weapon, or there was more than one shooter.
Just as he approached the wall of the castle, he heard laughter and saw the shooter stood on the wall high above him.
‘If I wanted to, you would be floating home right now!’
Mark did not take kindly to this.
‘I’ll shoot you off that wall if you don’t shut up,’ he threatened, trying to get a fix on the man, not wanting to be outdone by some deranged Spanish mercenary.
‘Ha ha!’ squealed El Toro, ‘no one has ever got the better of El Toro. You want I shoot you now?’ He continued to mock Mark.
‘So this is the contact Atkinson told me to come and see!’
Mark peeked out from his cover position and shouted that Atkinson had sent him and used his real name.
‘Reynaldo Clemente! A friend sent me!’
There was silence.
The nurse eased the frail old man into his electric bed in his room and dimmed the light down. His breathing was laboured and his lungs crackly. Nial Atkinson gave a sigh as if, in silent resignation, he contemplated his end of days. The nurse looked soulfully at him. She remembered the first time he came to this place, vigorous, full of life but hiding dark secrets and the scars on his body were testament to the life he sometimes described to her. If he didn’t have more medication soon, it would be too late for him to recover from this infection. Nial, being the man he was, sensed something was wrong with the nurse and took her by the hand, patted it and winked at her. She couldn’t help but smile at this sad gesture and realised he was probably a serious catch in his younger days.
‘Goodnight Major.’
Nial smiled.
‘Goodnight, my dear.’
She turned to leave, but not before she cleverly picked up the cell phone under the pile of hospital notes she had left on his table. She shut the door and made her way to the nurse’s station. Once there, she made her excuses to go on her break and grabbed her coat and cigarettes and disposable lighter and went outside. She walked around the back of the nursing home to the smoking area, out of sight of residents and other staff and drew the cell phone from her apron pocket. She picked it up, opened it and checked the last dialled number. She hesitated for a moment and braced herself before pressing ‘dial’ and putting the phone to her ear.
‘Mr King. Mr Mark King?’ she whispered with a tremble in her voice, ‘this is Susan, a nurse from Sunningdale where your friend Mr Atkinson is a resident.’ She paused again. ‘It’s about your friend.’
It was nightfall when El Toro and Mark sat in two armchairs front of a roaring log fire which crackled in its huge ornate fireplace. They raised their whiskey glasses, toasting each other, and Mark gazed up at the stag’s head above the fireplace as he ended the call from the cell phone Atkinson had provided for him. El Toro spotted Mark’s interest.
‘There was a priest hole behind the fireplace which led to tunnels deep beneath the castle and out to a small hidden harbour at the north end of the island. I have a boat there.’
El Toro also noticed a deep sadness in Mark that was not there before. He asked about the worry written all over Mark’s face. Mark took a deep breath and began his story, right the way through from his court case battle with Mohammed Al Azidi, to Marie’s murder, and everything that had happened since. El Toro sat back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other whilst Mark lit a cigarette as he explained.
‘My life has changed so much in the past three months.’
It was quite a story and Mark wasn’t even sure if El Toro would believe him but something he saw in El Toro’s eyes, something which looked like familiarity, glimmered and gave Mark a good indication he believed his story.
Mark spent an hour explaining his life story as El Toro got up to put more wood on the fire and refill their whiskey glasses. Mark was very warm in front of the fire and it sounded like it was a rough night out tonight.
‘It is rough. When you live on an island, Mark, it’s what you have to put up with.’
Mark smiled, thinking this was somewhere he could get used to.
‘Sounds like paradise,’ he said distantly. El Toro looked at him, knowing he had seen sights he would rather forget. El Toro, being an expert interrogator in his former life, questioned Mark.
‘Bad news from home?’
‘A friend of mine is elderly and isn’t well but was refusing drugs and I don’t know why.’
El Toro’s eyes narrowed. ‘Señor Nial?’ he asked.
Mark looked puzzled.
‘How did you…?’
It was El Toro’s turn to tell a fireside story, so he unravelled the mystery surrounding how El Toro and Atkinson knew each other.
‘Nial and I go way back. We were captured together in Bosnia. Special Forces. They fed him many kind of drug to make him tell them what he knew. He did not crack.’ Mark was horrified. ‘That is why he no take a drugs now.’
‘He’d rather have the pain than the memories?’ Mark asked.
‘Wouldn’t you?’ replied El Toro, looking seriously at Mark.
As Mark listened, El Toro threw a lot of names into the conversation, some of which Mark had recognised from his research, and some were new to him. It was at that point that Mark reached into his bag and bought out the photograph of Nial Atkinson and others during their military days. El Toro chuckled.
‘I remember the day and night after that picture was taken. That is me,’ he said leaning over and pointing himself out in the picture and going left to right, naming all those he could remember.
His finger stopped on the man stood next to Atkinson and he trembled. He sat back in his chair as if he had seen a ghost and stared at it. He stared at it so hard Mark half expected it to burst into flames at any moment.
‘What’s the problem? Who is that?’ Mark asked, pointing at the man in the photograph, the man El Toro had not named.
El Toro looked shocked at Mark, as if he was dumbfounded that he didn’t know who that was. Mark turned the picture over and examined it in more detail. El Toro got up and leant against the fireplace. From behind the stag’s head, he pulled a picture in a cardboard frame and brought it over to the small polished oak carved table they were sharing. He pulled his double-barrelled shot gun closer to use to prop himself up. He placed the picture on the table purposefully, the way a secret service agent would place evidence or an offender file in front of someone in interrogation. Mark stared at the picture, identical to the one he had found. A few, if not all, of the people in the photograph, could hold a copy of the same picture. Mark stubbed his cigarette in the waist high stand-up three-legged ashtray and exhaled as he looked around the room, as if for some flash of inspiration. El Toro stood over him.
‘Why you want so much information?’
Mark was slightly intimidated by this but wasn’t about to let it show, not even to El Toro. He jumped up to face El Toro, who looked equally surprised at this as Mark was at having had El Toro stood over him. The two faced each other before sitting back down. El Toro stared at Mark for a long time before drawing in his breath.
‘Many of the people in that picture had formed part of the Invictus Advoca, initially as a justice group to defend those who felt they couldn’t turn to their governments or authorities for help, people who required strength outside the law.’
Mark scoffed at this.
‘Like the A-Team?’ he laughed.
El Toro didn’t share Mark’s humour and stared at him angrily. Mark realised he wasn’t joking and looked sheepish at having made a bad joke at a bad time. El Toro continued.
‘Many of them assisted because they believed in justice. Real justice, not the rubbish people try to be palmed off with through the courts!’
This comment hurt Mark, as he had always tried to be just when trying a case. El Toro neither cared nor stopped talking.
‘Soon, a few of them banded together privately to discuss how disgusted they were because Invictus Advoca was branching out to undertaking professional “hits” and murdering innocent people, taking over countries and supporting terrorist regimes. This angered us and we tried to leave.’
‘And went into hiding,’ Mark said, nodding.
‘Most were hunted down and killed by the then-head of Invictus Advoca, a man who had forced his way to the top to create corruption, murder, deceit and bribery.’
El Toro stopped, almost afraid to mention his name. Mark was getting impatient.
‘Who?’
El Toro stared Mark in the eye as his finger pointed to the man with his arm around a young Nial Atkinson.
‘OK, so they were friends,’ thought Mark as he looked just as puzzled. Puzzled, that was, until El Toro spoke his name.
‘Thomas Theodore Lundon.’
Mark’s eyes widened in horror as he went dizzy at the gravity of what El Toro had just told him.
He stomped around the hall in front of the fire with a whiskey in one hand and a cigarette in the other, shouting insult after insult while he comprehended the enormity of the situation. The man he was hunting, the man who ordered the murder of his wife, was the best friend of Nial Atkinson. Now he REALLY didn’t know what to do. No wonder Nial was so helpful towards Mark when he explained what he was doing. El Toro walked over to Mark and put both his hands on Mark’s shoulders to calm him down and stop him wearing a hole in the fire place rug. He spoke carefully and quietly to him, giving Mark no choice but to listen carefully to what he was saying.
‘Listen to me Mark, this man needs to be killed dead. The world is not safe while he lives.’
Mark was breathless and panicked. How could he have missed that? It made little sense. El Toro picked up the picture and stared at it again, not being able to place three or four other people in the picture.
‘Another picture exists of the ENTIRE Invictus Advoca organisation heads around the world.’
Mark looked up at him.
‘They meet once a year in secret to discuss their “empire” and if you want to take the organisation out, you will have to hit the entire organisation in one.’
Mark nodded. He agreed but El Toro, although he had suggested the idea, really didn’t think Mark would take up the idea!
‘Taking out the entire organisation is suicidal and impossible.’ Mark wasn’t for turning. ‘It would create a vacuum for other members to be promoted within the organisation and carry on its work in place of those you might kill.’
Mark looked lost and hopeless.
‘What am I supposed to do? What was the point in Marie’s death, what did SHE do to deserve to die?’
El Toro sat Mark down, passed him a cigarette and a brandy from a decanter on the table and explained exactly how the Invictus Advoca worked.
When he had finished, Mark was stunned. He was loaded with useful information about how to infiltrate them, but he was still stunned. El Toro added that there were four members of the organisation, heads of it, who were unaccounted for and probably had assumed names. Mark had no idea how to trace them if El Toro and Nial Atkinson didn’t know their names. Decades to change names, places, and hide; Mark felt lost. The only thing on his mind was the question of how he would pull the trigger on Thomas Lundon, being a friend of Nial Atkinson. Mark reached for his cell phone.
The nurse had returned to Nial Atkinson’s room whilst he was sleeping and returned his phone. It was lucky that she did as, shortly after the nurse closed the door, it rang. Atkinson reached with a trembling arm and answered the phone. His voice seemed no different to the caller than it did days earlier when they had sat and played chess face to face, discussing Invictus Advoca.
‘Nial? Mark. Tell me about the photograph.’
Atkinson’s face dropped, and he realised he would have to be, for the first time in his life, one hundred percent honest with Mark. He sighed, propped himself up on his pillow, and explained his relationship with Thomas Lundon, why Nial Atkinson wasn’t his real name, why he owned a nuclear ex-government bunker at an undisclosed location and why he was now in hiding under this assumed name, at Sunning Dale Nursing Home. None of this was easy to do for Atkinson, but seeing as he concealed himself from his family for their protection and had set up trust funds in their names, he couldn’t be traced and had little use in life left. This was his last confession.
Thomas Lundon stood on the exterior balcony at the old abandoned UN military base he had secured, and watched next to the control tower, as a fleet of black Range Rovers rolled out onto the dust track the other side of the large metal fencing. He smiled to himself as he made his way down the steps to his car flanked by Roman Vose and another two men, all heavily armed with Uzi 9mms and M16s. The sound of the standard military issue, steel toe-capped boots echoed around the entire base to the fading sound of the Range Rover engines. Lundon could see the last of the Range Rovers was towing a trailer with a large black inflatable, and thought back to his briefing to his men. He also watched the two private Black Hawk helicopters take off from the helipad and had taken great delight in imagining what kind of impact this would have on anyone who he was chasing. He had fifteen men taking part in this operation, more than enough to bring in one man.
But what Thomas Lundon didn’t expect was that Mark King was no longer one man, he was five men and three of them were heavily armed.
However, Thomas Lundon had Mark King and was advised he was last spotted in Valencia in Spain associating with some boat owner. He knew he wouldn’t be far from there and had sent his ‘staff’ out to scour the coast of Spain for any place Mark King could hide. Lundon’s most trusted intelligence operatives worked through the night to work out what kind of locations would Mark King be going to around this area. They had identified several areas of interest, including an island off the East coast, of significant interest, seeing as it held a fourteenth-century fortified castle. But there was no way to infiltrate a building like that without attracting serious attention. Any attempt would advertise his location to his enemy. He had learned many things from his military life and giving up the element of surprise was the quickest route to defeat. He pulled out his two-way radio.
‘Get into position. We will wait until the storm has passed and send in a few agents to see if they can recon the building. Let’s test their mettle.’
The radio crackled into life as a passenger in one vehicle had just pulled out. He replied and Lundon gave a further order.
‘Before I authorise a helicopter drop into the main courtyard, I’ll need three teams of three. Alpha and Bravo teams will insert west of the objective by air whilst Charlie team will mount an amphibious assault, all under the cover of darkness.’
However, he had to wait until the current storm had blown over before being able to mount this kind of assault. He looked up at the watchtowers and his guards nodded to him as his driver drove his car into a fortified carport with blast doors. Lundon was no military leader or tactician, but he was desperate and he had performed this role many times before. He would wait here for his glory to be reported to him. And he would enjoy every moment.
The nurse returned on hearing the sound of Nial Atkinson talking and paused at the door, watching the old man talking like he was twenty years old again. She smiled at him as he beckoned her in and she helped prop him up on another pillow. He placed his hand in hers as she sat in the chair next to him while he held the cell phone in the other hand. He went into detail about what happened, nearly forty years previously, to his friendship with Thomas Lundon.
‘I first met Lundon in the army and we had saved each other’s lives several times, becoming firm friends. When we were recruited by a black ops unit to conduct counter terrorism around the world, specifically working for the US Special Forces unit Delta Force, we were recruited together because of our closeness and ability to work fantastically together.’
Nial Atkinson put the history so eloquently and slowed now and then to catch his breath. The nurse squeezed his hand in encouragement periodically, while smiling at him warmly and sympathetically.
Mark King remained silent on the other end of the phone, patiently waiting for Nial Atkinson to catch his breath. The nurse looked concerned and so administered a further dose of morphine after Atkinson agreed to take the drug again now he had explained to Mark exactly what he had been doing. He set it out in plain words for Mark exactly why he was involved.
‘Tom wanted to recruit you to his organisation, Mark. But upon following your developing career years before, he decided you would never agree to be part of such an unjust organisation and risked exposing it if you decided not to join. That was when your death warrant was signed.’
‘It was no good having someone who had been invited to join the Invictus Advoca wandering around after refusing, so he would have to be killed to tie up loose ends,’ Mark pointed out.
Atkinson paused again to get his breath and his nurse lifted a glass of water with a straw in for him to drink from and gently dried his mouth with a neatly folded, pristine white face towel. Atkinson always loved the luxuries, once stealing a solid silver cutlery set from an African dictator he helped eliminate and giving it to a friend as a wedding present, but not before removing two of each of the set he stole for his personal use.
Atkinson regained his composure and strained back the tears as he continued to tell Mark about how crazy the military life had made Thomas Lundon, even though it made him a billionaire.
‘Tom would have people brought to his villa in the Mediterranean to torture and kill them for fun, relinquishing all control over reality and moral standing. He’s a madman Mark, and madmen are dangerous.’
Atkinson was growing angry and hurt as the tone in his voice changed. The nurse got up to mop his fevered brow and hold his shoulders in a loving gesture as if to say ‘calm down’. Atkinson continued.
‘Tom had grown power-thirsty and lost sight of the original mission of the Invictus Advoca, using it instead to blackmail, murder, pillage and control people, towns, societies and governments all over the world. Wherever Invictus Advoca went, devastation and suffering followed.’
‘Then it’s time someone took him down,’ Mark growled determinedly, angered at how upset his old friend was getting.
Mark listened as Atkinson urged him to fail in his mission.
‘If you attempt to destroy this evil organisation, you will need to use every skill and every resource you have and be prepared that it won’t be an overnight solution. It may take months, even years to fully work your way up the chain of command. That is why I have sent you to El Toro.’