Cold Black

About Alex Shaw

ALEX SHAW spent the second half of the 1990s in Kyiv, Ukraine, teaching Drama and running his own business consultancy before being headhunted for a division of Siemens. The next few years saw him doing business for the company across the former USSR, the Middle East, and Africa.

Cold Blood, Cold Black and Cold East are commercially published by HarperCollins (HQ Digital) in English and Luzifer Verlag in German.

Alex, his wife and their two sons divide their time between homes in Kyiv, Ukraine, Worthing, England and Doha, Qatar. Follow Alex on twitter: @alexshawhetman or find him on Facebook.

Also by Alex Shaw

Cold Blood

Cold East

Cold Black

ALEX SHAW

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

This edition first published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Alex Shaw 2018

Alex Shaw asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © Alex Shaw 2018 ISBN: 9780008306335

Version: 2018-07-17

Table of Contents

Cover

About Alex Shaw

Also by Alex Shaw

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Keep Reading …

Dear Reader,

Dear Reader,

About the Publisher

To my wife, Galia, and my sons, Alexander & Jonathan.

To family in England and Ukraine.

Prologue

Harley Street, London, England

Aidan Snow sat on the examination table wearing only a pair of black boxer shorts. Dr Durrani poked Snow’s left leg with a gloved index finger, his large, bright eyes focusing intently.

‘Hmm. The incision seems to have healed nicely; the reduction in scar tissue is what we would have hoped for.’ Turning his attention to the right leg, Durrani continued. ‘I’m not as happy with this one, but then you did leave it rather a long time before coming to see me.’

Snow nodded. It hadn’t been his idea to visit the doctor, but a direct command from Jack Patchem, his handler at SIS. Patchem’s view was that no undercover operative could ‘blend in’ if he was riddled with scars. Snow saw no reason to complain.

‘Now the shoulder. Hmm. If you would just raise your arm for me… that will do fine. Any pain at all? Any discomfort?’

‘No.’

‘None?’

‘None,’ Snow lied. He got the occasional twinge from all his old injuries, especially those caused by bullets, but letting the SIS-contracted doctor know that wouldn’t help with his operational status.

Snow was fit – above average, even by army standards – but by the ripe old age of thirty-six, he’d had one leg crushed in a car crash and the other punctured with a round from an AK74. This was in addition to a recent bullet to the right shoulder. Ten years separated the first and second set of injuries, but they had been caused by the same ruthless former Spetsnaz member.

The first injury had led to Snow prematurely leaving the SAS and the second set had caused him to be recruited by Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), or as it was more widely but inaccurately known, ‘MI6’. After rehabilitation of his injuries and a refresher course in the Welsh mountains, competing against the newest SAS Selection hopefuls, he had been passed fit for service.

‘Medical over. You can get dressed now.’ Durrani walked to the sink, removed his gloves, and unnecessarily washed his hands. He straightened his blood-red bow tie. ‘How’s Jack these days?’

The question took Snow by surprise. ‘I’m sorry, Jack who?’

‘Good, good, just checking – “loose lips sink ships” as they used to say.’

‘They also make for very bad saxophonists,’ Snow replied as he quickly dressed.

‘What? Oh, very good. Mind if I use that one?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Thank you.’ Durrani smiled and opened the door. ‘Well, all being “well”, I’ll see you this time next year. Goodbye.’

Snow knew better than to shake the doctor’s hand. For a plastic surgeon, Durrani had a strange phobia of ‘personal contact’.

Snow exited Durrani’s examination room and couldn’t help but glance at the pretty receptionist, dressed in her pure white uniform; he could make out the line of a black bra beneath. She smiled at him as he self-consciously looked away and left the building.

Harley Street was busy with lunchtime traffic, businesspeople and a few lost tourists being given directions by a pair of Metropolitan Police officers. Snow headed north towards Regent’s Park and the nearest tube station; he had a meeting with Patchem at their Vauxhall Cross headquarters. Snow cared little for London, although living there was a necessity. It was too noisy and too scruffy, especially compared to some other capital cities. But not Paris. Snow remembered his friend, Arnaud, half-French and always defending the homeland of his mother.

Arnaud had argued that Paris was the ‘capital of Europe’ with its grand architecture. Snow had retorted that the ‘grand architecture’ didn’t make up for the pavements littered with dog shit and the stench of cheap cigarettes. He still blamed himself for what had happened. The events of eighteen months before, in Ukraine, had hit him harder than he had thought possible. Snow’s mental scars, too, had been ‘cosmetically repaired’. Involuntarily he touched his shoulder and felt for the bullet wound, now almost invisible but still aching. Snow had tried to save the life of a friend and failed.

A noise from behind broke his train of thought. A scream. Snow turned. A figure was standing outside Durrani’s building, Middle Eastern or Asian. A voice inside his head tried to tell him something. Snow retraced his steps back towards the doctor’s surgery, his eyes on the entrance. Another scream. Snow broke into a jog. Two men left the building in a hurry; one had his face obscured by bandages. They joined the first, who had now moved from the building and was holding open the door to a waiting Ford Mondeo. There was an object in the hand of the last man to exit the surgery: a handgun.

The gunman looked directly at Snow, who was still running towards him, and pulled the trigger. There was a ‘thud’ as a suppressed 9mm round left the weapon and raced towards the SIS operative. Snow instinctively dived left, down the basement steps of the nearest building, crashing into several bins.

A car door slammed. Winded, Snow raised his head. The Mondeo was now ‘four up’ and pulling away south into traffic. Snow sprinted to the surgery, straining his eyes to see the registration number of the Ford. He had a decision to make: follow the X-rays or check the building.

Snow took the steps up, two at a time. The door to the communal hall was open, as was that to the surgery. He’d hoped beyond hope that he wouldn’t find what he did. The receptionist lay sprawled back on her chair, her dress ripped open to expose her breasts. There was a neat bullet hole in her forehead and an explosion of blood on the cream wall behind. Snow swore, fury rising within. He kicked open the doctor’s door and found that Durrani had also been executed. Lying at an acute angle across his desk, he had been double-tapped in the chest then shot once through the skull for good measure.

In a flash, Snow was back out on the street, mobile phone to his ear as he waited for the emergency services to connect him. There was a loud honking from further up the street. The Mondeo was still there, caught up at the traffic lights at New Cavendish Street. Snow had to reach it. He ran faster than before, switching his phone to video-capture mode. Snow heard raised voices from behind and turned. The two Metropolitan Police officers. One saw the open door and went up to investigate, the other followed Snow.

‘Excuse me, sir… sir, excuse me,’ the officer shouted.

Snow continued to intercept the car, while the policeman quickened his pace, one hand on his helmet in what looked like a scene from the ‘Keystone Cops’. Snow drew level with the Mondeo and looked in. Four men, Middle Eastern. The one with the bandages was now removing them; another held a handgun. As Snow aimed his cameraphone at them, a hand grabbed Snow’s shoulder. Snow pivoted and flung his unknown attacker to the ground, his phone dangling by its carry cord. The police officer hit the pavement with force, his helmet spinning off into the traffic.

‘Security Services,’ was all Snow managed to get out, before a round zipped past his face. He fell to the pavement, the lights changed, and the Mondeo moved off. Snow tried to get to his feet but was forcefully pushed flat by the second officer, who had now caught up.

‘Secret Intelligent Service. You’re stopping the wrong person.’

The second officer attempted to place his knee on Snow’s chest. ‘Stay still!’

‘For the love of God…’ Snow twisted and, using his right leg, swept the officer’s legs out from under him. He sprang to his feet. The first officer, now standing, had extended his folding truncheon and was holding it in his right hand.

‘Get down… down!’

‘Get out of the bloody way!’ Snow lurched forward and ducked inside the officer’s advancing arm. He kicked the man in the back of the knee before ripping the truncheon from his hand and hurling it into the street.

Snow sprinted to the end of the road and at the junction reacquired the Mondeo, fifty metres ahead on Wigmore Street, stopped this time by a taxi. He heard sirens now, from Harley Street behind him, an armed response unit arriving on the scene given the sensitive Central London location. As Snow watched, the target vehicle raced off, mounting the pavement and breaking the speed limit. Snow turned and was met with a cloud of CS gas…

‘You… sodding… idiots!’

Hands again tried to clamp him. Eyes streaming, Snow fought back, kicking out at the blurred shapes. One officer went down swearing, the other landed a punch. Snow lost control completely and shoulder-barged the second officer before delivering an uppercut to his unprotected jaw. Both officers were down, hurt.

‘Listen to me!’ Snow yelled. ‘There’s a kill team out there getting away. We need to call it in!’

‘Armed police! Drop your weapon and lie on the floor, facedown.’

Snow shut his still-streaming eyes in disbelief. He slowly placed his phone on the pavement and lay down beside it. A black tactical boot kicked the phone into the gutter.

‘That’s HM Government property. You’ll get a bill!’

‘Be quiet now, please, sir.’

Gloved hands grabbed Snow’s and pulled them behind his back.

His hands secured, Snow was searched before being hoisted to his feet. The tight plasticuffs bit into his wrists. The two ‘beat bobbies’ were looking none too happy.

‘My name is Aidan Snow, I’m an SIS operative. Call Vauxhall Cross – they’ll confirm who I am.’

‘I’m sure we’ll do that at the station,’ the CO19 member mocked.

‘Come along, please, sir,’ a second added.

‘An SIS officer is down and the shooter is getting away. Call it in!’

‘Move!’ The friendly tone evaporated.

Arriving at the secure police station, Snow was led to the front desk for processing. The duty desk officer looked up, unimpressed. The CO19 officer placed a clear plastic bag on the desk. It contained the contents of Snow’s pockets, wallet and phone.

‘Name?’

‘I’m an operative for SIS. Call them.’

‘Your name?’

Snow took a deep breath; they were only doing their jobs, all of them, if badly. ‘Aidan Snow.’

‘Right then, Mr Snow, if you’ll just press your fingers there for me, we’ll scan your prints.’

There was little point in resisting. Snow put his fingers on the scanner. He wasn’t a fan of anyone having his personal information, let alone his fingerprints.

The desk officer looked at the screen and frowned. ‘OK, we’re going to put you in a holding cell until we can confirm your identity.’

Snow shrugged. He had no idea what had been on the scanner screen or even which database had flagged up, but he knew either way he’d be in for a wait.

‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’

‘Sure. How do you take it, shaken not stirred?’

Chapter 1

Shoreham-by-Sea, UK

A victim of the credit crunch they would call him, an unavoidable casualty of an unseen enemy: the recession. Paddy Fox swallowed his pint bitterly. He was no one’s victim. He looked at the jobs page for the third time before screwing it up in a ball. The anger he felt towards them hadn’t lessened in the six weeks since it had happened, the rage he had for his former boss. He had nothing to prove. He was James ‘Paddy’ Fox, a twenty-year veteran of the SAS and worth something. If no one saw that, then sod ’em.

Fox’s mobile rang and he grabbed for it. ‘Yes?’ His guttural Scottish hue hadn’t been lessened by years of living in Hereford and then Sussex. There was a pause, which instantly told him it was a company trying to sell him something, before a voice reading from a script spoke.

‘Can I speak to Mr James Fox?’

‘You could.’ He cut the connection.

Take, take, take! The world seemed to want something from him, but not him. He flattened out the paper and circled another job, the ‘Dymex’ logo blurring in front of his eyes. Tracey still worked for them, but why he had kept a corporate ballpoint pen he didn’t know. Was it his sackcloth?

Fox downed his pint of bitter and wiped his lips on the back of his hand. Just the two for now; more later when he already knew he’d storm out of the house after arguing with Tracey. It had become an almost daily occurrence since he’d become, as he saw it, ‘redundant’. He looked across the Crown and Anchor’s dingy, deserted bar. Burt, the jowl-heavy landlord, was the only other person in the room, with the exception of ‘old Dave’, who sat in the corner like a fixture, with his paper and pint of Guinness. Fox shook his head; what a miserable pisshole of a pub. It was the only bar in Shoreham that had yet to be ‘neoned’, as he called it, to have a bit of paint slapped on, fancy lights added, and the price of the drinks doubled. As such, it was the only place where the average age of the punters was over twelve – in his mind anyway. He stood, placed his empty on the bar, and nodded at Burt as he left the pub. Outside it was rush hour, cars cutting through the narrow streets of the old town in an attempt to miss the traffic. In a way, the SAS veteran was glad he wasn’t part of the corporate world any more – the ‘rat-run rat race’. Nevertheless, he was still angry at how he had left it.

Summoned to a glass-walled meeting room, Fox had looked across with disgust at the younger man in his designer suit and signature dark-blue shirt. The man spoke as Fox’s stare remained locked onto his eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Paddy, I really am, but as you were made aware at the start of the consultation process, cuts have to be made. We’ve been as fair as we can.’

There was a pause as Leo Sawyer waited for Fox’s reply. Unable to bear the awkward silence, Fox’s line manager, Janet Cope, coughed to clear her throat.

‘James, we really are sorry to let you go but it’s been decided we need two sales engineers, not three.’

Fox stared at each of ‘the suits’ in turn. ‘What about the position in Saudi?’ Fox’s voice was loud in the small, glass-walled room.

Cope flinched and Sawyer nervously straightened his tie

‘You weren’t suitable for the role. Sorry,’ Sawyer replied, in what he seemed to think was a sympathetic manner. He felt Fox’s green eyes bore into him.

‘But I speak Arabic! Can any of the other candidates?’ Fox had started to turn a shade redder than normal.

Cope gasped. ‘Now, James, I understand that you’re upset, but we don’t need to shout.’

Fox cast her a contemptuous look. ‘Only my mother calls me James.’

Cope herself turned a shade of pink and looked down.

Sawyer pushed a sheet of paper across the table to Fox. ‘If you have a look at this you’ll see we’re paying you in full for your unused holiday time, three months’ redundancy pay – as per your contract – and an additional bonus for all your hard work over the last five years.’

‘Six years. I’ve been here since 2002.’ Fox picked up the sheet and scanned the thirty-eight lines.

‘Of course, six years. My mistake.’

‘Your redundancy is effective immediately, as of the end of today. That means you can start looking for work from tomorrow. We wouldn’t want to stop you from finding another job. We really are truly sorry.’ Cope smiled that ‘monkey smile’ Fox had hated ever since the day she’d become his boss six months earlier.

Fox folded the letter, placed it in his shirt pocket, and stood. He stared again at both suits. Sawyer was about to speak but Fox held up his hand.

‘Thank you for your sincerity.’

Heads turned as Fox crossed the open-plan office to his desk; some tried not to make eye contact, others tried to look sympathetic. Either way, to him they were just pathetic. His two sales colleagues, those that weren’t being pushed out, were, unsurprisingly, nowhere to be seen. He reached his desk and started to empty its drawers into his pilot case. Fox had always disliked Sawyer. Ever since the last Christmas do, when Tracey had let slip he’d been in ‘Desert Storm’, the man had constantly quizzed him about his past. Sawyer – a member, he claimed, of the ‘territorials’ – had then tried to take the whole of sales and marketing on a team-building paintballing weekend. As marketing director, Tracey had gone and according to her Leo was ‘such a laugh’. At the next work event, Fox had caught him staring at her and given him the nickname ‘Eagle-eyed Action Man’. In fact, the only real action Fox could envisage Sawyer getting was from behind at the local gay bar.

Looking up, Fox saw the security guard leave the MD’s office with a clipboard in his hand. He bore the man no ill will.

‘Hi, Mick. Are you going to march me off the premises? ‘

‘Sorry.’ He put the clipboard on Fox’s desk. ‘I’m going to need the car keys and your signature here.’

Shaking his head, Fox took the keys to his BMW three series and dropped them into Mick’s outstretched palm. ‘Of course you are, and I’m going to walk three miles to the train station.’

‘Thanks.’ Mick cast a glance around before saying, almost in a whisper, ‘I don’t suppose Mr Sawyer has offered to drive you in his Z4?’

‘I’m not queer.’

Mick suppressed a smile. ‘It’s my break in ten minutes – I’ll take you to the station.’

‘That would be good pal, thanks.’

It was the way of the world. Mick had more decency than all of them. He patted Fox on the shoulder and left him to finish his bags. Fox continued to shove his personal papers into the pockets of his case. Sawyer and Cope remained cocooned in the meeting room, eyes glued to documents, pretending to look busy and hoping he would leave. Fox closed the case and walked towards the stairs. As he passed the meeting room he tapped on the window, causing both occupants to snap their necks to the right. Fox smiled and held up his middle finger.

Fox tried to forget that awful day as he crossed the road towards the river and used the pedestrian bridge to make his way home. The tide was out as usual and the river had turned into a thick, muddy smudge. Bloody awful if you asked him, but then Tracey hadn’t when she’d bought the house that overlooked it. As he reached the opposite side he could hear them already, the local kids from the flats out again on their ‘mini motos’, zipping between cars. Jim would be outraged. Jim was always outraged.

‘Get off the bloody road! I’ll call the police!’ Jim Reynolds, retired decorator and moral voice of the street, yelled after the miniature motorbikes.

Fox laughed. ‘Good evening, Jim.’ He liked his neighbour, even if he made fun of him.

‘Is it? I’ve had them effing kids tormenting me for the last hour! Shouldn’t they be at school?’ He waved his hedge scissors.

‘Jim, it’s almost six.’

‘Oh, well, at work then, or doing their homework. At their age, I was painting houses.’

‘So are they, with spray cans.’

The area had been touted as the latest urban development for professional people with two point four children and a BMW. The truth, however, was that the kids from the local council flats saw the quiet, pothole-free roads of Shoreham beach as their private racetrack.

The old man removed his gardening gloves and scratched his head. ‘Any more news on the job front?’

Fox shrugged. ‘Who wants to employ an old soldier like me?’

‘That’s the problem – no gratitude. They should have given you a medal.’

Reynolds knew that, as a member of the SAS, Fox had been sent into Iraq. Fox hadn’t been a member of Bravo Two Zero, as all those who knew the truth of his past seemed to think, but a deep-penetration mission which had never been publicised. It had been their job to recce the approach to Baghdad in advance of the coalition’s arrival, an arrival which hadn’t come, at least not for ten years. This mission, he never talked about. Reynolds, himself a veteran of Suez, had great respect for Fox.

‘Maybe when we’re both dead they’ll put plaques on our houses?’ Fox smiled.

There was the sound of bass-heavy music from behind them and Tracey Fox, his wife of five years, raced up the road in her convertible Saab.

‘Here she comes, Ghetto Gertrude!’

Reynolds chuckled as Tracey pulled up onto the drive. ‘Hello, love.’