Kingmaker (Alex King Book 16), page 1
Kingmaker
A P Bateman
Copyright © 2023 by A P Bateman
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For Clair, thank you for all your support
Also by A P Bateman
The Alex King Series
The Contract Man
Lies and Retribution
Shadows of Good Friday
The Five
Reaper
Stormbound
Breakout
From the Shadows
Rogue
The Asset
Last Man Standing
Hunter Killer
The Congo Contract
Dead Man Walking
Sovereign State
Kingmaker
The Rob Stone Series
The Ares Virus
The Town
The Island
Stone Cold
DI Grant
Vice
Taken
Standalone Novel
Never Go Back
Short Stories
The Perfect Murder?
Atonement
Further details of these titles can be found at:
www.apbateman.com
Contents
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
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Author’s Note
Chapter One
Monaco,nineteen years ago…
It was a warm evening with the Mediterranean sounds and smells that went with it. Crickets and cicadas hummed with an electric pulse that pierced the night, and the heady scent of jasmine, rosemary and thyme permeated through the scented pines. Ignoring all of this, standing in the welcome sanctuary of shadows from the streetlamps, King’s grip tightened on the chequered walnut grips of the 9mm Browning in his hand. Hammer cocked, safety off, his finger hovering tentatively near the trigger. Exiled president Lucky Man Jonathon Mugabe was sleeping soundly in his villa. Crates of Krug and Cristal champagne and a bevy of beautiful, and rather expensive prostitutes had been delivered to the property earlier in the afternoon, all courtesy of the UK taxpayer.
King watched the three men keeping to the long shadows on the opposite side of the street. At first, they had appeared to be casually ambling up the hill from town. Three men returning from an extravagant and hedonistic night in the bars, clubs and casinos below. But as they approached the entrance to the villa, their demeanour changed. Suddenly they had purpose. “Eyes on. Three men. IC-three,” King said quietly into his throat mic using the IC ethnicity code for black. He added, “Moving like they have military training.”
“Have that, King. Wait out.” King watched the three men scouting the front gates. There were motion sensors inside the grounds and CCTV cameras on the gates. Lucky Man Jonathon Mugabe had his own security team, but they would be too drunk, too stoned and too busy getting laid to be up to the task. The earpiece chirped into life, the brash Scotsman’s voice gravelly and sharp in his ear. “Weapons?”
“No visual,” King said quietly, the voice activated microphone relaying his hushed reply. “Wait… One of the men has drawn a short,” he added, using their own term for a handgun. Short for pistols; long for rifles.
“And the others?”
“One is tampering with the gate control, the other is watching the street,” King replied. “The lookout has drawn a short now, too.”
“Have that, wait out…” King’s heart was hammering against his chest. His right hand had started to shake. He had been here before. Another time, another place, but the sensation was the same. The seconds before he would be ordered to kill. He briefly wondered who Stewart was now talking to. Getting the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed. A quiet office in Whitehall. The Prime Minister’s office perhaps. But more likely an office in the River House on a floor otherwise in darkness. One of MI6’s mandarins working late and using a secure line. What paperwork would be kept? How many times had the mandarin made a decision that would set a man like King to work and ultimately end the life of another? The earpiece rasped into life again. “King, we have confirmation. Operation is a go. Go, go, go…!”
There was no time for over thinking it. He had trained for this countless times. King stepped out of the shadows and walked calmly and steadily across the road. He shot the first man in the back of the head. Work smarter, not harder. One down, two to go. The man watching the street had been looking the wrong way. Bad for him, good for King. He had barely begun to turn when King double tapped him in the left side. The man working on the gates turned around and held up his hands in hesitant and hopeful surrender, but it wasn’t going down like that. King had his orders and fired twice without giving the man’s actions time to consider.
“No survivors, King…” Stewart’s voice came through the earpiece, urgent and fatalistic. “Don’t fucking let me down…”
King cursed as he pulled out the earpiece and stared at two of the men, who were both groaning and moving on the ground. No survivors… It was a simple order, but never for the person holding the gun. He looked around him, knowing that he did not have much time. The police would already be on their way. He looked back at the two men, then stepped closer and did what had to be done.
Chapter Two
Two days later
Peter Stewart was used to sparse meeting rooms and basic servings of instant tea and coffee, stewed and over-brewed in stainless steel air pump flasks. This room was one of a dozen ten by ten boxes with a table for six in the centre and a projector, white screen and somewhere to plug in a laptop at one end. The ubiquitous flasks of tea and coffee were on the opposite side of the room set out on a Formica table. There weren’t even any plain digestive biscuits. A stark contrast to the opulence of the oak lined director’s office with twenty-year old Haig whisky and Remy Martin brandy in cut crystal decanters and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of ice. Stewart never seemed to have those meetings anymore. He ran the deniable Special Operations Wing of the Secret Intelligence Service. A department that did not officially exist. The people at the very top enjoyed the distance and deniability by lack of association.
“Your operative did a good job down there.”
“Thank you,” Stewart replied warily. “It was a rushed mission, the intel on the hit only came in that morning. As you know, we were both in London at the time.”
“I thought your man wasn’t going to cut it at one point. The ripples can still be felt from that IRA affair in France,” Felicity Willmott said acidly. “It’s never good when money disappears.”
“It’s never good when a liaison officer proves to be bent with another agenda. King put Ian Forsyth down. Okay, the asset took off with the money, but King should still be commended for his actions,” Stewart replied sharply. “He’s a damned good man.”
“My, you’ve changed your tune since Angola and the Congo,” she commented sardonically.
Stewart looked at her. She was a stern forty-something with wiry greyish brown hair pulled back in a severe bun. Behind her back she was known as one of the ‘Emilies’. Emily was the Soviet name given in the sixties to women of a certain age who had married the British Secret Services instead of a husband, and whom they would target with thirty-something men who could wine and dine them with flattering conversation and who mirrored Adonis in looks. They would take them to bed and use pillow talk in the comfortable time which invariably ensued after sex, in a relaxed and unguarded state of intimacy. Emily had been the chosen name because its Russian equivalent was considered boring and suited the personality of a spinster in such a job. MI6 had labelled these men ‘Ivans’, and before long they were feeding the ‘Emilies’ with false information for their Russian lovers to send back to Moscow. However, in his mind, Felicity Willmott was a little past being a credible Emily. The years had not been kind to her, and nor had her acceptance of spinsterhood.
Beside Felicity Willmott sat Armstrong. He wore a navy pinstripe suit, and his hair was flecked with grey. Somewhat greyer than when Stewart had last seen him. “No doubt that operation in Angola and the Congo shaped him up somewhat,” Armstrong added. “He’s on good form now?”
He’s not a fucking racehorse, thought Stewart. Instead, he said a little defensively, “I have no complaints.” King had more than proved himself to Stewart and he no longer considered the man to be his understudy.
“Lucky Man Jonathon Mugabe now has a team of bodyguards in place, courtesy of the Special Air Service.” Felicity Willmott paused. “I’ll be frank, Peter. The UK government can no longer foot the bill for the man’s exile, his luxury villa, his fleet of cars, his predilection for the finer things in life, and I believe, some of the more sordid. And now, he has a team of eight bodyguards costing the UK taxpayer upwards of four-thousand pounds a week.”
Armstrong nodded emphatically. “Yes, we need him to come good on our investment. We need his country’s mineral reserves, and we need them soon. Now, with the dictator Mustafa in Burindi cosying up to the Russians and Chinese, we not only lose stability in the Central Africa region, but a guaranteed supply of oil. We have Angola with the OPEC deal, but we lost the DRC rights and that of Nigeria as well.” He paused. “And the icing on the cake? Lithium. Huge amounts of it have been discovered in Burindi,” he said holding up a slim folding Motorola mobile phone. “For these things. Everyone has a mobile now, and people want to have the latest as soon as it comes out. Britain needs to get into the lithium market. And we need to do it in a big way.”
Stewart shrugged. “So, you finally want Mustafa out of Burindi?”
“Yes. Yesterday wouldn’t be soon enough either,” Armstrong replied with his trademark sardonic smugness. “And naturally, as we have paid for Lucky Man Jonathan Mugabe’s exile, we will get our return on his country’s mineral reserves.”
“Well, he is indeed a Lucky Man…”
“Don’t be facetious, Stewart,” Felicity Willmott said admonishingly. “It’s a different culture and a viable name in that region.”
“Mustafa has an army,” said Stewart without acknowledging the admonishment. “What do you want done?”
“If the coup d’état is a swift and decisive one, our intelligence shows that his army will switch over to support Lucky Man Jonathon. They switched once before. They’re not a brave bunch by all accounts.”
Stewart smiled. “I haven’t known many cowardly Africans. They may not be well-trained or experienced, but I’m not sure we can so easily discount their bravery in battle.” He paused. “But I get the sentiment. If you are going to kill a king, then you do it publicly and horribly and give the subjects reason not to seek retribution.”
“Well, I’m sure you can work it out. That’s what you do, so go and do it.” Armstrong stood up indicating that the meeting was over. “Oh, and make sure nothing sticks to SIS or Her Majesty’s Government.”
“That’s it?” Stewart asked incredulously.
“What else were you expecting?” Felicity Willmott asked curtly. “We don’t want to know the details. I’m not even happy being a part of this meeting.”
“Because you’ll be denying it all later no doubt,” said Stewart.
“No. Not if you don’t give us a reason to. Because it will be a seamless transition of power and nothing is going to stick to us,” Armstrong reiterated. “You have the green light, Stewart. Unlimited budget, unlimited remit. Just get it done as soon as possible.”
Chapter Three
Heathrow Airport
“Fucking hell, three whole hours to kill!”
“Can’t take deodorant on the plane, either.”
“Or a fucking razor…” Stewart scowled. “Or a fucking washbag. Fucking Bin Laden, fucking nine-eleven. Now we have to arrive with stinking armpits and a furry mouth.”
“Have another Scotch and stop bloody moaning,” King said impatiently, glancing at his watch. “Jesus, I can’t believe I’ve got three hours here with you and another seven or eight sitting next to you on the plane. For a man who’s been about a dozen times round the world, you really are a terrible traveller.”
Stewart scoffed. “The joke’s on you, dickhead. It’s thirty-eight hours with three stops…”
“You’re kidding?” King stared at him incredulously. “Thirty-eight hours? Show me the bloody ticket.”
“No, not kidding. Very much not kidding.” He fished through the documents and handed King’s ticket to him. “Ethiopia, Central African Republic, and then Burindi.”
“Oh, bloody hell, I need a drink now…”
Stewart laughed. “Bin Laden is going to create more revenue for airports now that check-in is three hours before boarding time. There’s a bar right above us,” he said. “Let’s just get pissed and worry about everything later.”
“Well, it’s a plan, I suppose.”
King followed Stewart up the steps, and they took a seat at the airport’s idea of a typical London pub. It was as tragic as it sounded with polished horse brasses, photographs of London taxis and double decker buses and monochrome prints of the docklands back when they were working docks and shipyards, and not a celebration of glass and chrome and redbrick apartments for yuppies and Arab businessmen. Stewart ordered two shots of Jack Daniels and two pints of lager. When the drinks arrived, he ceremoniously took a sip from his pint, dropped the shot glass into the lager and grinned. “Depth charger, my lad. It’s the only way to survive air travel.”
King followed suit, suddenly wishing he’d suggested a cup of tea instead. But he found himself thinking of the long flight and thought - what the hell? The drink was smoother than he expected, and Stewart was already ordering another round.
“What’s the job?” King asked.
“Just a recce for now,” replied Stewart. “We’re freelance hacks and we’re scouting out a story for National Geographic. You’re the photographer. Hence the camera equipment in the hold.”
“OK.”
“It’s all equipment you’re previously worked with, so you will be competent talking about it or demonstrating it to curious customs officers, or anyone else for that matter.”
“Who?”
“Burindi’s secret police.”
“Right,” said King. “You’re not selling it to me.”
“Well, it’s a good job I don’t have to.”
“Fair enough,” King replied, reminded again that he was owned by MI6 and would be for the foreseeable future. “So, if it’s for National Geographic, what’s the brief? Nature photographers or reporting on political corruption?”
“That would be too controversial,” Stewart scoffed. “No, it’s nature.”
“And the job?”
“Recon.”
“Right.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“We’re going to Burindi. I just killed three men who were going to kill the deposed president of Burindi. So, it’s a recon job ahead of a coup?”
