Operation Omega Read online

  Down in the post office van the young man with the earphones swore.

  For the second time that morning Mrs Burkiss turned round with a start to face her employer. He moved to within a few paces of her and spoke softly but very distinctly. ‘Mrs Burkiss, do you know what I have just found on my desk?’

  She was staring at him, wide-eyed. ‘Found, Mr Khalil?’

  He held up his hand, the fist lightly clenched. ‘Yes, Mrs Burkiss. A bug, that is what I have found. And now I want to know how it got there.’

  ‘A bug!’ She goggled at him. ‘Oh, Mr Khalil, I’m ever so sorry. I can’t think how it got there.’ Her mouth opened and shut as she sought for words. ‘What sort of a bug, Mr Khalil?’ Then, with something like a giggle, ‘Ooh, do take it away! I can’t stand creepy- crawlies!’

  Khalil stared at her. If this was pretence, she was a very fine actress. But yet how else…? He stepped closer and opened his hand under her nose.

  ‘Not a creepy-crawly, Mrs Burkiss. This! You know quite well what this is, don’t you. Now tell me who told you to plant it—and where are the rest of them?’ She was gazing at him in silence now, like a hypnotized rabbit. He pressed home his advantage. ‘Tell me about the agency that sent you here. Did somebody there tell you to plant these on me? What is the Cavendish Staff Agency, really? Who exactly do you work for?’

  He moved closer still as he spoke so that she was pressed back against the sink, her hands stretched out on either side of her. He saw the rather wide, over-lipsticked mouth working in silent terror and smiled at the thought that he would not have too much difficulty in getting the information he wanted. Then the world exploded around him in agony as Mrs Burkiss brought her knee up and caught him with merciless accuracy in the crotch. He doubled up, gasping, and as he did so the pain was swallowed up in sudden darkness as the edge of her hand came down on his neck in a karate chop that would have felled an all-in wrestler.

  Mrs Burkiss looked down at the prostrate figure at her feet for a moment. Then she bent and pulled him over onto his back. With rapid, impersonal movements she pulled back an eyelid, checked the pulse at his throat and then went through the contents of his pockets. Her investigation completed she rose and went to the holdall which she always carried with her. She delved beneath the folded mac and the extra cardigan and produced a pair of handcuffs; then, taking Khalil by the wrists, she dragged him over to the leg of a peninsula unit which was firmly screwed to the floor and handcuffed him to it. Then she went into the living-room and sat down at the desk to glance through the papers in the two bags. Finally, she returned to the kitchen and switched off the radio.

  Down in the van the operator sighed with relief and took up the earphones again. A voice came over them, clear to both men. ‘OK. Send in the clowns . . .’ The tone was relaxed, almost weary; but it was not the nasal cockney of Mrs Burkiss. It was a melodious, expressive voice, an instrument perfectly trained to its owner’s purposes. The two men in the van exchanged glances which combined surprise and appreciation. The voice went on, ‘Mr Khalil has been unavoidably detained. You’ll find him in the kitchen. But there’s no need to hurry. “He will stay till you come”.’

  ‘Shakespeare yet!’ muttered the curly-haired one, who was a young man of some education. His companion grunted.

  ‘But who the hell was that?’ he asked.

  Chapter 3

  The Spartacus Health Club provided excellent facilities for its members, right in the heart of London’s West End. There was a swimming- pool, a gymnasium, a sports hall, squash courts and all the usual adjuncts of saunas, solarium and so forth. Very few of the members realized, however, that the top two floors of the building housed a very different organization, which was, in its own way, also dedicated to the health of the community, though from a very different standpoint. The Special Security Service, known to those who knew of its existence at all as the Triple S—or to some of its less ardent admirers as the Snake Pit—was officially a department of the Home Office, working in close co-operation with the police. In practice, under its commander, James Pascoe, an ex-cop himself, it was an autonomous organization answerable only to the very highest authority.

  The inspiration, which had been his own, to build the Health Club as a cover for the organization gave Pascoe a good deal of quiet satisfaction. It enabled his operatives to come and go without any danger of revealing their connection with the service, provided first-class training facilities in the private suite on the fourth floor and gave him an ideal apartment where he could literally live on the job. He had long ago given up making the effort to go back to what was still officially his home in Surrey, except for the occasional weekend. It also meant that he could indulge his own passion for keeping fit whenever he had a spare half-hour.

  It was a source of mild regret to him that very few of his hand-picked and highly trained agents appreciated his own favourite sport of fencing, most of them preferring the more violent martial arts to the sublety and finesse of the foil or the épée. There was one, however, who could give him a match, one who realized that speed and perfect co-ordination could overcome brute force; and on that particular Thursday morning Pascoe was enjoying a specially lively and well-balanced bout. Advance and retire, parry, riposte and lunge; the body in perfect balance, the fingers alone guiding the flickering point of the foil, his eyes fixed on the slight figure of his opponent—a slender enough target, even in the padded fencing jacket. He tried to stare past the mask, fancying that he caught the glint of blue eyes through the close mesh and, for an instant, his concentration must have wavered; feint, parry, doublé, trompé, dégagé and lunge. The point of the foil fixed itself into his jacket just above the heart and the blade arced upwards in a supple curve.

  ‘Touché!’ Pascoe acknowledged.

  His opponent recovered from the lunge in a single lithe movement and the foil blade swept up and then sideways in salute.

  ‘My bout, I think.’

  Pascoe returned the salute gravely and pulled off his mask, smiling at the flushed cheeks and rumpled honey-coloured curls of the girl who faced him.

  ‘You’re getting too good for me!’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she returned crisply. ‘You let me win sometimes, just so I don’t get discouraged and give up all together.’

  ‘You know that isn’t true,’ he returned, ‘because it isn’t necessary. Listen, I want to talk to you. Come up when you’ve showered and have breakfast with me.’

  She nodded. ‘Fine.’

  I’ll give you fifteen minutes.’

  The girl grinned. ‘Make it ten. I’m a working girl, remember. I have to be in the office by nine.’

  He laughed. ‘Have it your own way.’ Promptly ten minutes later she walked into the room which Pascoe used as an office by day and a sitting-room outside working hours. Dressed now in beautifully fitting jeans and a silk shirt she hardly looked, Pascoe thought in passing, like your typical office girl. Over the second cup of coffee he said,

  ‘Right, business. Tell me about yesterday.’ His companion grimaced over her cup. ‘Sorry about that. I know you didn’t intend to pick Khalil up so soon; but he found one of the bugs and somehow made the connection with the agency. I couldn’t risk him passing that information on to anyone else.’

  ‘You were absolutely right,’ Pascoe told her. ‘The agency is far too valuable as a cover to risk having it blown. Anyway, Khalil was obviously on his way out of the country. We should have to have had him picked up within a matter of hours at the airport, or wherever he was headed. We got what we really wanted from him.

  ‘You mean the telephone conversation with Farnaby?’

  ‘Yes. Have you heard the tape?’

  She nodded. ‘Cindy played it over to me in Control when I looked in yesterday evening.’

  ‘It’s not enough on its own, of course,’ Pascoe went on. ‘But at least it proves that we’re not barking up the wrong tree. The connection between Khalil and Farnaby does exist.’

  ‘And
Farnaby is expecting a delivery of some sort in the near future.’

  ‘If only we knew exactly when—and where,’ Pascoe mused. ‘How are things progressing on that front?’

  ‘I think we’re making progress.’ His companion put down her cup and leaned forward. ‘Farnaby is giving a big party on Saturday night down at his country house in Hampshire. You know he’s got a place right on the Hamble estuary? If he is bringing drugs in, that could be the ideal place to land them. Also, I suspect that it’s at do’s like this he selects his victims. He’s a very choosy pusher, our friend Farnaby. You have to be extremely well-connected to get on his books. I reckon he invites the cream of local “society” to a house party—either down in Hampshire or at his place in town—and picks out the kids who look daft enough, or vulnerable enough, to be useful to him. After he’s got them hooked— well, he’s got not only them but Mummy and Daddy on the end of a piece of string.’

  ‘It’s a good theory,’ Pascoe agreed, ‘but can we get any hard evidence?’

  ‘That’s what I’m hoping to do this weekend.’

  ‘You’re going to the party?’

  ‘Yes. I think Farnaby’s decided that I might be a potential customer.’

  Pascoe sighed and shook his head. ‘I don’t like it, you know. You’re going right out on a limb, completely on your own. If something went wrong…’

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing will go wrong, James. Why should it? As far as Farnaby is concerned I’m just a washed-up ex-actress and full-time junkie who makes a pretty bit of window-dressing.’

  Pascoe looked at her. ‘I don’t like to hear you speak of yourself in that disparaging tone,’ he said quietly.

  The remarkable blue eyes returned his gaze with a level, ironic stare. ‘What, about the girl they once called “the thinking man’s Marilyn Monroe”?’

  Pascoe’s normally austere face softened. ‘I prefer to remember her as the actress the critics acclaimed as the greatest Rosalind of her generation.’

  For a moment her eyes dropped. ‘Ah,’ she said softly, ‘but that was in another country and besides…’

  ‘And besides, the wench is dead,’ he finished for her. ‘But she isn’t, is she? And I want to make sure it stays that way. I wish you’d let me give you some back-up for this operation.’

  ‘But can’t you see, James,’ she exclaimed, ‘that that is the worst thing you could do? The less connection there is between me and Triple S the better.’ She smiled at him. ‘Don’t worry. Everything’ll be fine. I’ve got to go now. Bad example for the boss to come in late, you know.’

  She rose, picked up a denim jacket and a holdall and went to the door. ‘Bye, James. See you tomorrow.’

  ‘Bring your foil,’ he said. ‘I want my revenge.’ Then, as she opened the door, ‘Take care now.’

  She smiled, put her fingertips to her lips and blew the kiss towards him.

  * * *

  At the same instant the doors of the private lift at the end of the corridor leading to Pascoe’s apartment opened to let out the two men who had been on duty in the post office van outside Khalil’s flat. Seeing the girl in the doorway, the gesture of the blown kiss, they paused and exchanged looks of surprise and amusement. Pascoe was not in their experience the sort of man one imagined people blowing kisses to. As they walked on the girl came towards them, heading for the lift. They both stood aside to let her pass between them and as she did so their eyes swept over her with frank appreciation. Marriot, the younger one with the curly hair, noticed the lithe walk, the bounce of the honey-coloured hair and the cool poise of the chin. Stone, his partner, working from the ground up, saw the long legs, the slender waist, the wide, amused mouth and, with a faint shock, blue eyes which met his own with something that felt like a challenge. Then she was past them, walking away, and leaving him with his eyes glued to the neatest bottom he had ever seen inside a pair of jeans. They moved on, towards Pascoe’s door, and Stone heard Marriot knock and the answering ‘Come in’. Marriot opened the door and courteously waved him through. The girl had reached the lift and was waiting for the doors to open. Stone turned, and walked smartly into the doorpost.

  Nick Marriot, looking back and struggling to suppress his laughter, saw the girl turn inside the lift just in time to observe his partner’s mishap and thought he saw, as the doors closed, the lips twitch into an irrepressible grin.

  * * *

  A neat, white TR7 drew up in the Knightsbridge mews which housed the offices of the Cavendish Domestic Agency. In the parking slot labelled LEC stood a rather dilapidated red Mini. The driver of the TR7 wound down the window and peered at it with some annoyance, then parked neatly across its tail, got out, locked the car and ran upstairs to the agency’s offices on the first floor.

  In the outer office a dark-haired woman in her forties was checking a file cabinet, a blonde was typing and a fresh-faced, plump girl of 17 or 18 was going through the morning’s mail. The owner of the TR7 paused in the doorway.

  ‘There’s a nasty little red car in my parking slot.’

  The plump girl scrambled to her feet, her cheeks reddening.

  ‘Oh, Miss Cavendish, I’m terribly sorry! It’s mine. I didn’t realize that was your place.’

  ‘Didn’t you see the notice—LEC?’

  ‘Oh yes, I saw it. I thought it was something to do with the London Electricity Board.’

  The figure in the doorway leaned one hand on the doorpost in a theatrical gesture.

  ‘L.E.C.’ she intoned. ‘Laura Eleanor Cavendish! Electric I maybe, sweetheart, but bored, never!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the girl repeated. ‘I’ll go and move it.’

  Laura Cavendish straightened up. ‘There’s a good girl,’ she said briskly. ‘Here.’ She tossed some keys across to the girl’s desk. ‘You’ll have to shift mine first. I’m parked right across your tail. Irene, can you come through, please. I want to go over next week with you.’

  The dark-haired woman followed her into the inner office. When the door had closed behind them the girl said,

  ‘Do you think she was really angry?’

  ‘Good lord, no,’ replied the blonde. ‘Laura doesn’t get angry about little things like that, thank God.’

  The girl looked after her employer wistfully. ‘I wish I looked like that in jeans!’

  ‘Don’t we all!’ said her colleague. ‘Still, I suppose if we had the energy and the self-discipline to go to a health club every morning before work, and dance classes twice a week in the lunch hour, we probably would.’

  In the inner office Laura was saying, ‘Is that new girl as gormless as she appears?’

  Irene, the office manager, laughed. ‘No, not really. She’s quite bright, and very willing. I think she finds you rather overpowering, that’s all.’

  ‘What’s in the post today?’ Laura asked.

  ‘Jenny’s sorting it now,’ Irene told her. ‘I expect she’ll be in with it as soon as she’s moved your car.’

  ‘Did you hear any more…’ The question was cut short as the glass in the window was shattered by an explosion. Irene flung herself to the floor with her hands over her ears. It was Laura who reached the shattered window within seconds and looked out. Below, in the mews, her TR7 stood untouched on the opposite side of the road. In the parking spot labelled with her initials the remains of a red Mini could be seen through a dense cloud of oily smoke.

  Chapter 4

  Peter Stone was not happy in his work. If there was one thing that was guaranteed to annoy him, it was the feeling that he was being used as a baby-minder.

  ‘If you ask me,’ he said, swinging the car rather more viciously than necessary round a right-hand corner, ‘Pascoe’s lost his marbles.’

  Nick Marriot looked up from the A-Z on his lap. It did not need the sight of his partner’s set jaw and the hard line of his mouth to tell him his mood. He could feel the tension exuding from the compact, muscular body.

  ‘How’s that?’ he asked casually.


  ‘Hasn’t he got any better use for us than acting as nursemaids to one of his ex-girlfriends?’ Stone demanded.

  ‘What makes you think she’s an ex-girlfriend?’

  ‘“Miss Laura Cavendish is a close friend of mine. I should be very distressed if anything were to happen to her”!’ Stone had a talent for mimicry and his voice caught exactly the languid ex-public-school accent of his superior. Then, in his own voice, ‘I didn’t join this outfit to run round after middle-aged ladies with a nervous disposition.’

  ‘She did get her car blown up this morning,’ Nick pointed out.

  ‘Correction. Somebody else’s car that happened to be in her parking slot got blown up. What makes her think the bomb was intended for her?’

  ‘Pascoe must think it was,’ Nick commented reasonably. ‘Anyway,’ he was glancing through a file of papers on his knee, ‘What makes you so sure she’s middle-aged?’

  ‘Got to be, hasn’t she,’ Stone said firmly. ‘Look at the file. Head of a domestic agency with offices in Knightsbridge; home address a flat in Chelsea. How many dolly-birds do you know who can run to that sort of life-style? I’ll bet you that she’s a middle-aged battle-axe with a cut-glass accent and a Maggie Thatcher hair-do.’

  Nick looked interested. ‘Usual terms?’ he asked.

  ‘Done!’ replied Stone.

  ‘Incidentally,’ Nick commented. ‘According to this she drives a TR7. That doesn’t quite seem to fit with your image.’

  ‘Trying to be trendy. Doesn’t want to admit she’s past it.’ Stone’s voice was crisp and confident. ‘I know the type.’

  ‘Take the next right,’ Marriot told him. ‘It’s a one-way street.’

  Stone pulled over to the centre of the road and was about to swing across into the mews when a white TR7 shot out of it, swerved across his nose and roared away up the main road. Stone caught a glimpse of a slight figure wearing denims and a cap pulled down above dark glasses.