Chapter One
Close protection. A lucrative business for a man with an SAS background. Especially one fluent in half a dozen languages, and trained by a Chinese master in ancient Oriental disciplines. A man like Gabriel Wolfe.
He shook hands with the businessman who’d just hired him for a trip to Mexico City, then headed out of the discreet office building off Trafalgar Square.
Walking to Waterloo Station, he hooked right into a dim, slime-walled tunnel beneath the pedestrian bridge over the Thames. As he reached the midpoint, the semi-circle of brighter light at the far end darkened: three men with shaved heads and sharp suits were coming towards him.
The man in the centre had a cocky swagger to his walk and was about Gabriel’s height. Slim build but fit, jacket straining across his shoulders.
To his right, a giant, well over six feet. Heavy too, with the kind of muscle only steroids can build. To his left, a smaller man, not so keen on the gym, more of a beer and chips guy, soft flesh on his face and pudgy hands poking out of his shirt cuffs.
The leader moved into the centre of the tunnel, making Gabriel’s passage a choice between walking over a wino’s meagre estate of flattened cardboard and filthy overcoats, or squashing himself against the slimy wall to let him pass.
The other two spread out to left and right. He could smell their aftershave from yards away. Gabriel aimed for a gap on the leader’s left but the man mirrored his move, delivering a good bump to his shoulder.
“Oi,” the man said. “What do you say when you knock into someone?”
The other two laughed. Confident, smug, self-assured. Clearing his mind, Gabriel remembered the words of Master Zhao. Do not seek the battle: run like the mouse. But if the battle comes to you, fight like the wolf whose name you bear.
That suited him fine. He’d seen enough fighting to last him a lifetime. And enough death to last him for all eternity. He wanted to give these idiots a chance. He wanted to get the early train.
“I’m sorry for bumping into you. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a train to catch.”
The leader hooted with laughter and mimicked Gabriel’s voice.
“‘Now, if you don’t mind, I have a train to catch.’ I don’t think so, shorty. I want to hear something like a proper apology. Like maybe on your knees.”
No. That wasn't going to happen.
“OK, you’ve made your point, and I’ve said sorry. I just want to go home.”
“And I just want you to say it properly, don’t I?”
The others loved that one and cackled. Gabriel noticed they’d adopted a balanced stance, weight on the balls of their feet, fists curling and uncurling, muscles bunching and tightening under their jackets. He tried again.
“Please, let’s not do anything we might regret, OK? We can all just walk away from this. I don’t want any trouble.”
“You pissing coward. Nobody’s walking away from this. I tell you what. Why don’t you give that old wino all your money then we’ll give you a little something to remember us by?”
The old wino turned his booze-reddened face towards Gabriel. Maybe hoping he was about to get a windfall.
This wasn’t going to end well, Gabriel thought. They reminded him of the big-boned army brats at one of his schools in Hong Kong. The ones who’d taunted him about his mother, who was half-Chinese, before punching him to the ground and stealing his lunch money.
“If you insist,” he said, removing his jacket, “but let me put this down to kneel on.”
He folded the jacket with the lining outermost, knowing that everyone was watching, before laying it in a pad to his side. His shirt concealed a hard-muscled frame kept in shape through thrice-weekly visits to a gym run by an ex-sergeant he knew.
The gang almost looked disappointed that the verbals were over and only the beating remained. The leader smirked and clenched his fists, but what happened next took him by surprise. From his crouching position, Gabriel straightened lightning fast, took a step to his left, and punched the giant hard in the throat.
The big man never expects to get hit first: he’s relaxed, watching and waiting. So the surprise doubles the effectiveness of the blow.
He toppled, cracking his head against the wall on the way down. Then Gabriel took two quick steps to his right, at the same time pulling the top off the fountain pen he’d palmed with his left hand as he took his jacket off.
The lead thug blinked and focused on the object sending tendrils of fear into his balls. Gabriel let the point of the steel nib hover a couple of millimetres from the man’s right eye. The pudgy man hung back; Gabriel barked at him, using his best parade ground tone.
“Stand still!”
He’d mustered out of the SAS as a captain and could bring the tallest, biggest, toughest men into line with that voice. The two thugs stood still. Very still. Behind them, Gabriel could see a young couple, tourists maybe, walk into the tunnel, notice the standoff and about-turn.
He leaned close to the leader’s face, then whispered in his ear.
“I used this in the Congo to relieve a warlord of his left eye. We had to practice on dead pigs in training, but men’s eyes are easier.” The man gulped, his prominent Adam’s apple jerking in his throat. He wasn’t to know Gabriel was lying. “So be a good boy and be on your way, and I won’t use it on you. You can still get out of this in one piece.”
He withdrew the pen and stepped away from the shaking thug. That should do it, he thought.
“Bastard!” the man screamed before throwing a wild punch at Gabriel’s head.
By the time the fist arrived, Gabriel had moved to one side. The heel of his hand connected with the underside of his opponent’s chin, clattering his teeth together with such force that two upper incisors shattered on impact. As the man staggered back, clutching his bloody mouth, Gabriel moved again.
No need for overkill, just some summary justice.
One, two, three quick jabs with outstretched fingers to the man’s throat, his gut, and, as he collapsed onto the pavement, the back of his neck.
The last blow landed directly above the basal ganglion, a knot of nerve fibres that functions like an on-off switch for consciousness. As the thug passed out, the final thing he saw was Gabriel leaning over him.
“The nearest A&E is St Thomas’s,” he said.
No need to worry about the pudgy lieutenant. He’d scarpered as soon as his leader’s swing failed to connect. Gabriel reached into the leader’s jacket and withdrew a brown leather wallet stuffed with twenties and fifties. Three hundred pounds at least.
He returned to the old wino slumped against the tunnel wall and held out the bundle of cash.
“Here, he said with a smile.
Wide-eyed, the wino started counting the money before stuffing it deep into his pocket.’
Thanks, guvnah,’ he rasped. ‘I saw what you done to those bastards. You’re a gent.’
Gabriel shrugged. ‘Find yourself a room for the night, and maybe avoid this spot for a few days?’
* * *
As Gabriel approached his front door two hours later, a frenzied barking let him know his burglar alarm was still operational. Half inside, he was almost pushed over by the brindle greyhound snuffing and nuzzling at his trousers.
“Seamus! Did you miss me, boy?” he said, scratching the dog behind the ears. “Has it been too long since Julia let you out?”
Julia was a good friend, one of very few; a fight arranger for the movies who’d burned out in Hollywood and moved back to her childhood home.
He poured himself a glass of white burgundy and looked across to the answering machine he had to rely on owing to the patchy phone signal in his village.
The red light was blinking. One new message. It could wait. Gabriel needed a walk and so did Seamus by the look of his dog’s tail, which threatened to come off if it wagged any harder.
* * *
The next morning – after waking from a dreamless sleep with no nightmares, a sign of a good day to come – Gabriel pulled on jeans and a jumper and headed downstairs for breakfast.
He made tea, breathing in the distinctive aroma of what he called “the house blend”: one third Kenyan Orange Pekoe, one third Earl Grey and one third English Breakfast. It was a tangy, floral smell that reminded him of his father’s morning routine. Always the same, never changing.
His father, a trade commissioner in Hong Kong, always drank tea from a bone china Willow Pattern cup, threads of vapour curling up and catching the morning sunlight slanting in over the bay through the apartment windows. Those moments together were the best time. Before school and its torments.
With the same clockwork regularity that he did everything else, the elder Wolfe would fold his paper, dab his lip with a linen napkin, and stand.
“Well, old boy, duty calls. Queen and country. Mustn’t keep the old girl waiting, eh?”
With a ruffle of his son’s unruly black hair, his father would leave for his office, whistling a snatch from HMS Pinafore, The Gondoliers, or The Mikado. Gabriel still couldn’t hear a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta without being whisked back to those precious mornings. Then he frowned, because, once again, his memory was refusing to replay the darker moments from his childhood.
He’d been expelled from seven or eight schools for fighting, for disrespect, for “lack of discipline.” In the end, his parents had entrusted their only child’s education to a family friend.
Zhao Xi tutored their much-loved but wayward son for seven years, instilling in him the self-discipline Gabriel’s parents hoped he would and the ancient skills that they knew nothing about. Along with karate, meditation, and hypnosis, they’d worked on Yinshen fangshi, which Master Zhao, as Gabriel learned to call him, translated into English as “The Way of Stealth.”
His father had assumed he would go to university – Cambridge, like he himself had done – and the Diplomatic Service. Gabriel had other ideas and had told Wolfe Sr he intended to join the army. Not just any regiment either – the Parachute Regiment.
From there, he’d applied to and been badged into the SAS, where the emphasis on personal performance rather than strict adherence to arbitrary codes on everything from uniform to the ‘correct’ gear suited him.
He replayed the phone message from the night before. The caller’s voice was warm. Cultured.
“Hello, Mr Wolfe. Sir Toby Maitland here. I need a chap with your sort of skills. Come and see me, would you? Rokeby Manor. It’s the house behind the racecourse. Please call my secretary to fix an appointment.”
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