One was to Shepherd’s left, the other to his right. Despite their size they were on the balls of their feet, as nimble as ballet dancers. Shepherd had his hands up, fingertips curled, ready to strike or grab. They had to make the first move: he was unarmed and they had the knives. One against two was always difficult, and one unarmed man against two with knives was almost impossible. He was watching their eyes as best he could because it was the eyes that would give away their intentions.

  The man to his left made a small stabbing motion but it wasn’t an attack, more an attempt to capture his attention, so Shepherd looked at the other man’s face just in time to see his eyes tighten and the nostrils contract as he inhaled. The attack came almost immediately and Shepherd was already moving, sweeping up with his left arm to parry the knife away, then striking the man in the chest, between the throat and the sternum. The assailant fell back and hit the wall hard, knocking the breath out of him.

  The other man lunged towards Shepherd, knife arm outstretched. Shepherd grabbed his wrist and twisted, then kicked him behind the left knee, forcing him to the ground. As he grunted in pain, Shepherd pulled the knife from his grasp and took a step back. The man stayed down, looking up at Shepherd, grinning. ‘Nice move,’ he said. He got slowly to his feet, breathing heavily, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Shepherd turned to the man sitting on the bed. ‘What do you think, Tony?’

  Tony Docherty, MI6’s man in Marbella, was sitting with his back against the wall, legs outstretched, drinking a vodka and tonic he’d made for himself from the minibar. It was his third since they’d started rehearsing. He raised his glass. ‘It looked good to me.’

  ‘Yeah, but did it look real?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘I nearly pissed myself watching,’ said Docherty. ‘I didn’t get the feeling they were really trying to kill you, though. There was a slight lack of commitment.’

  One of the Algerians nodded. Docherty had only introduced him as Farouk. The other was Salim. ‘We could shout,’ said Farouk. ‘Curse, maybe.’

  ‘That might work,’ agreed Docherty. ‘The silent-assassin thing makes you think something’s going on. More noise generally and you’ll look like pissed-off muggers.’ He raised his glass at Farouk. ‘You okay for him to hit you like that?’

  ‘Yes, but no harder, please.’ He grinned at Shepherd. ‘You hit hard, in the face or the throat, and I would not be getting up.’

  ‘That’s the last thing we want,’ said Shepherd. ‘I have to fight you off, but we don’t want you hurt so bad that you can’t get away.’ He looked at Docherty. ‘What do they do afterwards? Have they got somewhere to lie low? They can’t come back here, obviously.’

  ‘There’s a safe house not far away where they can hide out for a day or two. And we have two vehicles close by. They’ll have keys for both if they can’t get to the safe house for any reason. But Meyer isn’t the sort to call the cops. They’ll be fine.’

  ‘Okay, guys, we’re good to go. Just one thing. Depending how it goes, I might let you cut me,’ Shepherd told them. ‘So don’t worry if you see blood.’

  Farouk frowned at Docherty and said something in French. Docherty replied, apparently fluent. ‘If that’s what you want,’ Farouk said.

  ‘It’ll make it more real,’ said Shepherd. ‘But don’t you go stabbing me. I’ll take the lead. Maybe a cut to the forearm – I’ll put my arm against the blade and put the pressure on.’

  Farouk spoke to Docherty, again in French. ‘He’s worried about cutting you,’ said Docherty.

  ‘It’s on me,’ said Shepherd. He went over to Farouk and got him to hold the knife out. Shepherd placed his arm against the blade, just hard enough to make an impression on his shirt sleeve. ‘All I have to do is push and I’ll get a cut. Nothing too deep, but there’ll be blood, and blood always has an effect on people.’ He patted Farouk’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve been cut before.’

  Farouk exhaled but clearly wasn’t happy.

  ‘Now, when do we do it?’ Shepherd asked Docherty.

  ‘Last night he took a walk through the marina and ended up at a fancy sushi restaurant. He had dinner and drinks and walked back to the boat.’

  ‘Was he alone?’

  Docherty shook his head. ‘A girl, and another guy. The captain of the boat.’

  ‘Not a bodyguard?’

  ‘He’s with the boat. Doesn’t look like a bodyguard but, then, no offence, neither do you. You can obviously handle yourself, though.’

  ‘So the thinking is they’ll do the same tonight? Take an evening walk, eat and return to the marina at about what time?’

  ‘It was eleven last night.’

  Shepherd wrinkled his nose. ‘They could go clubbing. They could get a car back. There’s a lot could go wrong. How long is the boat booked in for?’

  ‘They didn’t arrive on the boat,’ said Docherty. ‘They flew in. The boat is here year-round. The captain seems to be a friend.’

  ‘And the girl?’ Willoughby-Brown had said Docherty hadn’t been told about Lisa Wilson and what she was doing. The fewer people who knew she was an undercover cop, the better.

  ‘Girlfriend, I guess,’ said Docherty. ‘They walked hand in hand. Pretty, long black hair. Fit. Good legs.’

  Shepherd looked at the Algerians. ‘Be especially careful not to hurt the girl,’ he said.

  The two men nodded.

  ‘So what do we do?’ Shepherd asked Docherty. ‘Keep them under surveillance and then you tip us off when they’re on the way to the boat?’

  ‘I’ve got two good men on it,’ said Docherty, ‘both on scooters. I’ll be out in the marina. I’ve got a boat fixed up not far from the one Meyer’s staying on so they can lie low there until they’re needed. If anyone spots them leaving the boat it won’t be an issue – the booking is untraceable. Once they are back in the marina I’ll give Farouk and Salim the go-ahead. They move in, you pull your Good Samaritan act, they run for the hills. Hopefully you’ll be in like Flint.’

  ‘I think you’ll find it’s in like Flynn,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Nah, it’s that movie in the sixties,’ said Docherty. ‘In Like Flint.’

  ‘Yeah, there was a movie with James Coburn called In Like Flint. But the saying is “in like Flynn”, because Errol Flynn – the movie star – got laid a lot. Apparently.’

  Docherty raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, you learn something every day.’ He raised his glass. ‘Thanks for that.’

  ‘Pleasure,’ said Shepherd. He glanced around his room. Docherty had booked him a single room in the name of Jeff Taylor at the Benabola Hotel and Suites, but they spent most of their time in a three-bedroom penthouse because it had views over the Puerto Banús marina where Meyer was staying and a large sitting room where Shepherd could rehearse with the Algerians. The hotel was just four miles from the centre of Marbella and a forty-minute drive from Málaga airport. The two Algerians and Docherty had taken a room each. The sitting room was large and comfortable with sofas and a big-screen TV on one wall. There were three bathrooms and an open-plan kitchen. Not that any of them was cooking: several room-service trays were scattered around, along with beer cans that had been emptied by the Algerians. Shepherd had no problem with them drinking: the smell of alcohol would make the forthcoming attempted mugging seem more realistic. He was less happy about Docherty dipping into the minibar but he seemed more than able to handle his drink so it wasn’t an issue. There was a pair of powerful binoculars on the desk and Shepherd picked them up. He went over to the window and focused them on the marina below. ‘Which one is Meyer’s?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s not actually his, so far as we know,’ said Docherty. ‘It’s registered to a company in Panama but that could be a shell, of course.’ He walked over to stand by Shepherd and pointed down at the marina. ‘Third jetty along. See where the big boat is with the circular white radar thing on the top? With the two satellite dishes?’

  ‘Got it,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Go along the jetty towards the sea. Fifth boat. Two motor boats, a two-masted yacht, a catamaran, and his is the catamaran next to that one. You can’t see much of it – that big bugger’s in the way – just the front.’

  ‘The bow,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘I thought the bow was at the back,’ said Docherty, waving his glass.

  ‘That’s the stern. The bow is at the front. The prow is the top bit of the bow.’

  ‘You sail?’

  Shepherd chuckled. ‘I know the basics.’ He put down the binoculars. ‘Okay, so now we wait.’

  Standing sat at corner table in Starbucks with a coffee and an egg-salad sandwich in front of him. He was holding Lexi’s iPhone. It was a 7, the latest model. Zoë had been right: it was password protected and that was a problem. If he got the password wrong six times he would be locked out for a minute. Seven failed attempts meant a five-minute lockout, eight was ten minutes and nine was an hour. After ten failed attempts he would be locked out and all the data on the phone would be deleted. The earlier iPhone models had four-digit passwords but Lexi’s required six. He figured he might as well try the obvious one first. 123456. Fail. He wrinkled his nose. He tried her birth date – month, day and last two digits of the year. Fail. He reversed the first two numbers – day, month and year. Fail. He cursed under his breath and realised he was tensing up. He sipped his coffee and practised square breathing for a few minutes. There was no point in getting angry. This was a problem that needed solving and getting angry wouldn’t help him solve it any quicker. He had seven attempts left. Lexi was a young girl: she wouldn’t be bothered with remembering a random number. She’d choose something easy, something she could tap in without thinking. The problem was that there were a lot of easy combinations and she could have chosen any.

  The keypad also had letters on it so he tried ALEXIA. Fail.

  He sipped his coffee. 123789. Fail.

  That was five fails. Next time he would be on a lockout. He put the phone down and sipped his coffee again as he stared at it. He ate his egg sandwich, then took out his own phone. He googled ‘unlock iPhone 7 London’. He was rewarded with more than six hundred thousand possibilities. Many were shops and websites offering to repair or unlock mobile phones. He scrolled down the list and saw that several were in Edgware Road, just three stops away from Maida Vale on the Bakerloo line.

  He walked to the Tube station, and fifteen minutes later he was in a phone shop where a middle-aged Pakistani man said that for twenty pounds he’d unlock it on the spot. The man didn’t ask if the phone belonged to Standing, just put the twenty pounds in the till and gave the phone to a young assistant, who took it to a back room. He returned five minutes later with the unlocked phone. Standing left without a receipt.

  He walked past a Middle Eastern bank, a Lebanese restaurant, outside which a dozen middle-aged Arab men were smoking hookah pipes, a shop selling saris and a pharmacy, its window covered with Arabic signs. Most of the people he walked by were Arabs or Asian, and it was easy to forget that he was actually in England. He crossed the road, heading for Edgware Road Tube station. There was a Costa Coffee shop and he went in and ordered coffee and another egg sandwich, then took them to a corner table. The shop seemed to be full of middle-aged Arab men sitting in groups, either reading Arabic newspapers or talking in their own languages. Several stared at him as he sat down, their eyes hard, as if they objected to him being in their territory. Standing wondered how they’d feel if they knew what he’d been up to in Afghanistan and Syria, how many of their countrymen he’d killed. He took a bite of his sandwich and realised immediately that it was better than the one he’d had in Starbucks. The coffee was, too.

  He took Lexi’s phone out of his pocket and stared at the screen, his heart heavy. He had a bad feeling about what he was about to find, but he knew he had no choice. Her screensaver was a close-up of a guy with a nose piercing and a tattooed neck. He frowned, wondering who it was, then realised it was probably one of the singers in the posters on her bedroom wall. He went to her menu and clicked on ‘Photos’. There were hundreds. Most were selfies: Lexi practising various pouty looks. But there were others too. Of the man in the picture in her locket. Some of him on his own, then the two of them together. In some of the pictures she was holding bottles of Bacardi Breezer. In others she was smoking a hookah pipe. There were other pictures of Lexi with girls, but there was only the one man. And he was a man, Standing was sure of that. Early twenties, at least. Maybe twenty-six or twenty-seven. Not much older than Standing. Eight years older than Lexi.

  He went to ‘Messages’. There were a lot. The most recent were from himself. The ones before that were from her mother and father, asking what time she was coming home.

  The message before was from Frankie. The man in the picture. See you there at six, babe.

  She had replied almost immediately: I’m not sure I want to go.

  His reply: Do as you’re told.

  She’d replied, OK. And added a heart.

  He looked at the date. It was the day she’d died. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  He went through to the list of calls Lexi had made and received. The last calls she had received but not answered were on the day she’d died. From her parents. The last call she had made was on the same day, but earlier. To Zoë.

  He heard growling laughter at the table to his right, and when he looked over he saw three bearded men staring at him. They’d been talking about him, he realised. He stared back and felt the familiar rush of blood that let him know his body was preparing to fight. There were three of them but they were overweight and out of condition and he was as fit as a man could be. He wanted to push away the table, throw himself at them and beat them all to a bloody pulp. It would be so easy. A punch to the face, breaking a nose and loosening teeth, maybe a slash to the throat to break a trachea, a thumb in the eye to blind, a kick to the groin, a stamp on the head. He was breathing heavily and his knuckles whitened as his grip tightened on the phone. For a second the men returned his stare, then one by one they turned away, hunched over their coffees.

  Standing stood up, put Lexi’s phone into his pocket and walked over to the table. ‘You bastards don’t know how fucking lucky you are,’ he said. ‘Normally I’d kick the living shit out of you for giving me the stink-eye like that, but you know what? It’s your lucky day. I’m having anger-management therapy and this is brilliant practice.’ He smiled but his eyes stayed as cold as ice. ‘So you gentlemen have a nice day.’ He made a gun with his right hand, pointed at the man furthest away from him and winked. ‘Bang, bang,’ he said, then walked out of the coffee shop, breathing slowly and evenly as he counted up to ten.

  The marina was known to pretty much everybody as Puerto Banús but its full name was Puerto José Banús, named after the Spanish property developer who had built it in the early seventies. It had grown over the years to become the largest marina and shopping complex on the Costa del Sol, with more than five million visitors a year. Expensive cars prowled the narrow roads, model-pretty girls exposed their expensive boob jobs on the beaches, and big men with teak suntans and gold bracelets, sovereign rings and chunky gold watches downed Cristal champagne as if it was Pepsi. During the days when Spain didn’t have an extradition treaty with the UK, Puerto Banús had become the epicentre of the Costa del Crime, and as Shepherd walked through the marina he was constantly scanning faces.

  He was more likely to be recognised on the Costa del Sol than almost anywhere else in the world. As he walked he heard plenty of British accents, usually south London, but there were Irish and Scottish, too, and a lot of Russian. In 2010 the British police had raided the Costa del Sol as part of Operation Shovel, and Shepherd had spent three months under cover in Marbella, paving the way for the day when 120 suspected British gangsters had had their doors kicked in. After the raids a lot of the British criminals had moved out, but the attractions of the area soon had them drifting back. Morocco was just forty miles away, across the Mediterranean, source of many of the drugs that ended up in Europe. It had become such a successful drug-smuggling route that several Colombian cartels now shipped their cocaine from South America to Morocco and from there into the lucrative European markets. The Russian Mafia had also discovered the advantages of Marbella and had arrived in droves. Shepherd had worked against a number of Russian gangs, another reason for him to be taking extra care in Puerto Banús.

  He was wearing a pair of black jeans, a green Lacoste polo shirt and a Breitling watch. He had a gold chain around his right wrist and another around his neck. He was carrying two phones, a throwaway with a Spanish pay-as-you-go SIM that Docherty would use to contact him to tell him the mugging was going down, and an iPhone with the Jeff Taylor card in it.

  Docherty’s surveillance team had followed Meyer and Lisa to a seafood restaurant, and Farouk and Salim were on standby in the marina. The throwaway phone buzzed in his back pocket, letting him know he’d received a message. He checked it. On way. Shepherd put it away. It had taken Meyer and Lisa just under fifteen minutes to get to the restaurant. He checked his watch and headed away from Meyer’s boat along a walkway. He had plenty of time. There were parties on some of the boats, music playing and champagne corks popping, girls in designer labels and men twice their age standing in groups, laughing loudly and slapping each other on the back. Shepherd played the part of a tourist looking at boats he could never afford, occasionally stopping to check out some of the bigger ones. His phone buzzed again: 5 mins.

 

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