Colonel Michael Ralston arrived in Athens and headed immediately out to the Rockwave Festival at Terra Vibe Park in Malakesa. Gunner was greeted by Spiros Alexandros, a big-hearted, expansive Festival director who welcomed him to Greece. Spiros took terrorist threats to his rock concert very seriously, but he confessed to Gunner that he was confident that there was, in fact, no subversive activity that his Security force had encountered. This was the fourth concert that Spiros had put together in two years and he did not see anything to alarm him this time. Everything was under control and the concert was in good hands. He introduced Gunner to his concert promotors, two brothers in their forties, Christos and Niko Lykalos, likeable and gregarious who showed him around the outdoor stadium. Gunner noted the massive stands going up that dwarfed the stage. Myriad colored light stands had gone up above the stage area. The workforce was a hive of activity. Christos and Niko steered Gunner through the frenetic preparations, pointing out safety measures already in place, including several pitched tents where the public were vetted before streaming into the open-air stadium. Gunner asked his hosts what was backstage. He was told there was a basement area with dressing rooms and marble stairs leading down to a lower level. Gunner was appreciative for the impromptu tour, but he wanted to have the chance to look around for himself. The Lykolos brothers had no problem with that and left him to his own devices while even more Security personnel flooded into the stadium.
Gunner climbed onto the stage where the rock band was setting up their equipment. The group was called Nexus, whom Gunner had never heard of, but he had not heard of the other mega-rock stars either, except perhaps for the Beatles, the Doors and the Grateful Dead. Nexus consisted of Amanda Stevenson, the sole female singer. Beside her were Doc Conrad, Terry Monaghan, Buster Cruz, Ethan Stanwitz and Gonzo Lindsey. Amanda had a voluptuous figure and was dressed in a black t-shirt. Her black hair was cropped short in bangs. She bestowed a smile on Gunner that could have heated up his blood. The other male members of the group were dressed in ripped skinny jeans and a Smiling Apple Hoodie, a long-sleeved Assassin Black Creed shirt, a black The King of Terrors Slim Fit t-shirt, and a black knit-weave that had emblazed on it Do I Look Like a Fucking People Person? Gunner introduced himself to the band, shaking hands, but they were getting ready for their headlining set.
Gunner walked backstage into the wings where he found a wooden staircase leading down into the basement area. He descended into the three dressing rooms there and, beyond them, several small rooms filled with pipes and electrical equipment under the stage that had been cordoned off. He ducked under the pipes and the heating vents, finding one of the pipes was very hot to the touch. There was no sign of explosives being hidden in the basement area, just dusty boxes with more junk and some fairground carnival masks and paraphernalia from some long-forgotten pageant.
Gunner retraced his steps through the basement area and climbed the wooden stairs that led through the Stage Right wings back out onto the stage. Nexus were still setting up their equipment which consisted of amplifiers, microphones, keyboards, patch cables and a drum kit with the group’s logo on it. There were also several acoustic and bass guitars, a saxophone, violins, electric violins, double bass and two pianos. Christos and Nico Lykalos latched onto Gunner and escorted him from the stage. Above them the tiered bench-like seats were rapidly filling up as the concertgoers were led into the arena. Christos indicated the crowd who were finding their seats.
“After our last experience with crowd control,” he said, “we found a way to keep the lines moving rapidly by funneling them through the tents.”
“That gave us an opportunity to search for any suspicious backpacks, briefcases or Apple devices,” Nico said. “We confiscated a while bunch of them. Cell phones too. The punters moaned about it, but in they realized that we were taking care of them.”
“How many Security Staff are on hand in the arena?” Gunner asked.
“We’ve got about a hundred, give or take,” Christos said. “They’ll be patrolling the tiers of seats, keeping in touch with walkie-talkies. I am afraid that your intelligence intel may have been for nothing. But we are here for you.”
Gunner nodded. “You have a phrase in Greek that I have always liked. ‘Don’t walk behind me. I may not lead. Do not walk in front of me. I may not follow. Just walk beside me and by my friend.”
The two brothers were duly impressed. “You speak our language, Colonel?” Christos asked.
“Halting and not very well. I spent ten years in Greece, on and off. There is an extremist terrorist named Jack Roslin. I came across him in Rhode Town. He frequented a place called the Melete Craft Beer Bar. Ever heard of it?”
Nico grinned. “I thought I knew every Greek dive and bar in a hundred miles! But I don’t know that one.”
“He may be no longer there,” Gunner said. “It’s about five years since I last saw him.”
“Do you have a description of him?”
“Big guy, soft-spoken, dangerous. Worked as a mercenary for several years. He might he here at the concert. He wears a silver death’s head ring on his right hand and another one in plain gold beside it.”
Gunner took out one of the folders he had been carrying in his jacket pocket and handed it to them. They shook their heads negatively. Gunner said: “I didn’t get a chance to go to Rhode Town, but I talked to my friends in the bar who told me they had not seen him for over a year. But distribute his picture to your security staff.”
“We will do that,” Nico assured him.
At that point they hustled over to where more Security Officers were having an impromptu conference in front of the stage area. Gunner let them get on with their duties. The ex-Colonel had inspected the backstage area, the warren of small rooms and nooks and crannies in the basement. Security had already gone through those rooms and the backstage area several times. They, like Gunner, had found nothing that pointed to the stadium have been breached. Control had said the terrorist threat could be spurious.
But as he looked around at the stands that were rapidly filling up with young concert revellers, Gunner had a dread in the pit of his stomach that would not go away.
His sixth senses had kicked in big time.
Somewhere in Terra Vibe Park here in Malakesa a bomb was about to go off.
When McCall landed in London it was pouring with rain, sending little fitful gusts into the air. There was a text waiting for him from Control. He had located Samantha’s apartment in Kensington Gardens Mews in North London. She had been living there since before she had hooked up with Matthew Goddard. She had never officially moved out, paying the rent ahead. When McCall got to his hotel, which was the Dorchester, he picked up a room key and an envelope that had been left for him at the front desk. There was a single key in it and an address on a nametag. He took a black London cab to the mews address, got out and looked up at a four-story house on a cobbled street which was almost overgrown with ivy that crept up the wall. There was an ornate balcony on the second floor which could be accessed by a sliding glass door. It gave McCall an eerie feeling as is if he had stepped into the past where coachmen and horses were quartered. The mews was sheltered from the rest of the street like it was in its own little world. There was no sound, not even muffled traffic. He inserted the key, opened door to Samantha’s apartment and stepped inside.
A narrow staircase led up to the second floor with a floor-to-ceiling library and a small morning room in the back of the house. McCall climbed up to the second floor which in turn opened into a large sitting room with another small room, almost like a carriage room, which overlooked the wrought-iron balcony. Beech and cherry trees were in evidence and a towering elm tree that leaned almost against the mews house. The sitting room was in darkness. McCall could see the shapes of a couch, a couple of wicker chairs, more floor-to-ceiling freestanding bookshelves, a cherry roll top desk, a kitchenette and the sliding glass door that led out onto the balcony. Heavy rain lashed the sliding glass door. Lightning erupted, followed by a roll of thunder. The news house was barely visible in the haze of the storm.
McCall moved quickly to a bedroom. A Hummingbird Percale Duvet cover and sham were on the four-poster bed. There was a rocker in one corner and a maple-wood dresser. McCall opened a wardrobe, revealing dresses and chic suits that Samantha Gregson had worn when she had worked for the Company. Rows of men’s suits were jammed into the small space as well as men’s shoes. They had probably belonged to Matthew Goddard. McCall had a brief sense-memory of Goddard standing in his hotel suite in New York City in a dark blue, three-piece suit. There were several red ties in the closet with small chess pieces on them and a shelf for gold cuff links and several pairs of Florsheim Berkley loafers in Burgundy. He had held a Walther PPK semi-automatic pistol pressed to a young woman’s head. She was naked and trembling in the darkness. In the end, McCall had been forced to kill him by sending a slim throwing knife into his right eye.
McCall moved into the bathroom. No soap, no shampoo. There was a wicker hamper full of dirty clothes. He retraced his steps from the living room into the kitchen. There was nothing in the refrigerator except for a few frozen dinners and some left-over pizza. There were some magazines on the low coffee table, Vogue, Harper Bazaar, People, Travel & Leisure and Newsweek. The paperbacks on the bookshelves were all thrillers or romance novels. McCall moved over to the Cherry Roll Top desk and started opening the drawers. He found the usual assortment of Pilot pens, a ruler, push pins, paper clips, staples and a Montblanc Meisteruck number 149 fountain pen with black ink and an old-fashioned inkwell. He found nothing of interest in the other drawers except for more folded travel brochures. He glanced up. Through the sliding glass door lightning flickered over the mews house. A moment later another explosion of thunder echoed. Rain lacerated the glass balcony window. It might almost have been night. In the sudden cacophony of the elements McCall did not hear someone entering the house.
He turned his attention back to the travel brochures. They extolled the benefits of vacationing in Rome, Spain, Stockholm, Prague, Greece, and the UK. All of them cities where Samantha Gregson and her mercenaries were planning to strike.
The barest of movements swung McCall from the desk.
A cheese-grater looped around his throat.
McCall’s vision appeared to narrow down to a slit as the attacker pulled the silver cheese grater tight. He saw the muscles in the assailant’s face tighten. His breath was hot on McCall’s neck. The sheen of the inkwell on the drawer caught McCall’s eye. He reached down, unscrewed the top of the inkwell and threw it back into the assailant’s face.
The assassin reached up to claw at his eyes where the ink black had penetrated them.
McCall grabbed at the cheese grater and pulled it from his neck. In the same movement, he went down to his knees and hurled the attacker over his shoulder. He landed hard, his hands trying to claw the stinging ink from his eyes. McCall rolled over and up onto his feet. He saw the assailant was over six feet, wearing a black belted raincoat. McCall’s attention was riveted onto the man’s right hand. There was a silver ring on his ring finger with the demon-claws skull. McCall knew it had etched on it: Remember That You Must Die.
Memento Mori.
There was something familiar about the assailant’s face. McCall could not place it at first, then he saw a resemblance to Tom Renquist, the mercenary whom McCall had fought at the West Texas Regional Water Treatment plant and sent plunging to his death.
In that instant the assailant was back on his feet.
McCall hit him hard, slamming his head into the open desk drawer. The man caught hold of McCall’s coat, getting his arms locked around him. His right eye had almost completely closed up, the black ink staining his face, giving him a bizarre, nightmarish look. Like out of a horror movie. McCall clawed at the attacker’s hands, finding purchase, ripping the man’s hands away. He came right back at McCall, both of them twisting in various choke holds, trying to find the other’s weakness. McCall finally threw the assassin to his knees, but he just came back up again. McCall traded blows with the assassin, parried with fast reflexes while the assassin struck hammer fists at McCall’s head. Finally McCall grabbed the man’s coat and propelled him past the couch and slammed him against the sliding glass door leading out onto the balcony. The force of McCall’s thrust smashed the door, hurling jagged glass shards onto the terrace. The assassin collapsed onto the balcony. McCall followed him outside. Rain sheeted against them, almost blinding in its intensity. Immediately he saw that the assailant had a large piece of jagged glass sticking out from his right leg. McCall knelt down beside him.
“Lie still.”
“Go to Hell.”
“Tell me your name.”
Little bubbles burst from the assassin’s his lips as he spoke. “It’s Scott,” he said.
“Your brother Tom Renquist tried to kill me in Texas,” McCall said. “I see the resemblance. I will call for an ambulance. You will bleed out if that glass has severed an artery.”
The assassin suddenly reached out a hand for McCall’s throat. McCall held it tightly, his face inches from the wounded assassin. “You don’t report to Matthew Goddard now. He is dead. Did Samantha Gregson send you to kill me?”
The assailant stared up at him, his right eye obscenely disfigured from the black ink. He was trembling in the driving rain. McCall shook him.
“What is your mission? Who are your targets?”
The mercenary just shook his head, staring up at McCall with ironic eyes. McCall let him go and straightened up. He moved to the shattered door, kicking large fragments of glass from the balcony. He heard a coughing sound behind him and whirled. The assassin had managed to get to his feet and break off the jagged shard of glass.
McCall thought he was about to lunge at him.
Then the mercenary turned around and threw himself over the wrought-iron railing.
McCall heard the sickening fall as he ran to the railing. The man had landed on top of a parked car beneath the massive elm tree. A car alarm had gone off. McCall stared down at the prone assassin, then he ran back to the shattered door into the sitting room.
The cops would be there in within five minutes.
McCall grabbed up the travel brochures and put them into the pocket of his overcoat. He locked the door, ran to the entrance to the secluded mews and disappeared into the elements.
Samantha Gregson stood outside the mews, isolated in the deluge. She was wearing a belted raincoat and a silk scarf at her throat. She watched as McCall’s figure ran through the rainstorm and grabbed a passing cab. Samantha was not worried that she would lose sight of him. Her small homing device was still planted beneath McCall’s skin. She could track him anywhere he went. She had not realized he had found her mews cottage. That was something she had kept secret. But she did not care. McCall would find nothing in her house that he did not already know about. It would place her in London, but that was all right too. She would be just a face in the crowd at the Royal Albert Hall. McCall would not know she was even there until it was too late. But somehow it irked her that McCall had let himself into her inner sanctum. That was a special place for her. She did not like the idea that her house had been violated in this way. But after tomorrow all hell would break loose.
Samantha heard the sound of the police cars arriving. She felt a momentary regret that her mercenary Scott Renquist had fallen to his death while struggling with McCall. He had been a dedicated follower. He did not deserve to die, but all of her mercenaries were pawns to her. They could be sacrificed when necessary.
Samantha Gregson pulled her Burberry raincoat tighter around her and ran through the downpour where McCall had disappeared.
By this time tomorrow night he would be dead.