Death Run

From the raised area round the main roulette table, Chance had a good view of most of the casino floor. He placed a small bet on number seven and hoped he didn’t win. Then, keeping his hand in his jacket pocket, he pressed the small button on the side of the metal box and started to count the seconds.

Chance knew that the moment he activated the device in his pocket, every one of the hidden surveillance cameras throughout the casino went blind. The great thing about a wireless intranet system was you could put cameras wherever you wanted and they just radioed their pictures into the network. But if someone jammed the frequency then you saw nothing.

Twenty-one seconds after the cameras went blind, Chance saw the door to the main security control room open abruptly and a man come out. With fiery red hair and a beard to match, the man was fully two metres tall. He walked quickly and with an air of authority that did nothing to disguise his fury.

Pausing only to be sure the roulette wheel hadn’t stopped at seven, Chance followed the red-haired man. He got as far as the first turn of the staircase leading up into the main hotel. Here there was a door marked “Staff Only”. The man keyed a code into a pad beside the door and pushed through. Chance counted to four before he heard the sound of another door banging shut.

Chance pressed the button on the device again, turning it off. He had what he needed – for now. Ignoring the security-locked door, he continued up the steps to the next landing, and waited. A few minutes later, the red-haired giant emerged again, this time with another man.

“The systems are back online now,” the other man was saying. “I’m sure it’s just a glitch. It can’t be deliberate, Mr Bannock.”

Chance started down the stairs again, following just close enough to overhear.

“Let’s not take the risk,” the big man said. He had a thick Scottish accent, rolling the ‘r’ of “risk” angrily. “If we lose the property now, there’ll be hell to pay.”

“He’s quite safe where you put him,” the smaller man said. “No pun intended.”

Bannock grinned, his beard parting to reveal yellowed teeth.

Chance headed back to the roulette table and lost some more money. After twenty minutes, he pressed the button on the jamming device again and started to count. This time it was eight seconds. That was what Chance expected – they’d be quicker now, thinking it wasn’t a one-off technical hitch. But if it continued…

The third time Chance only jammed the cameras for a few seconds before putting them back online. The control-room door remained closed. The fourth time it was over a minute before Bannock emerged, and Chance immediately turned off the jammer again. He watched with satisfaction as a man in a dark suit chased after Bannock and was growled at for his trouble. Yes, Chance thought, that should beenough. Next time the security systems packed up they’d be sure it was a glitch, not deliberate sabotage. He made his way casually back to the main staircase.

Chance turned on the landing, heading past the Staff Only door. As he turned, he again activated the jammer and immediately returned to the number pad by the door. He’d seen Bannock – angry and therefore careless – key in a code. 5619. The door clicked open and Chance was through.

He checked quickly for cameras and saw one covering the door. He moved out of its range and turned off the jammer. Give them a minute to shout at each other, then he would kill the cameras again. In the mean time, he looked along the dimly-lit corridor, working out which door Bannock had slammed earlier.

There was only one real contender – just four seconds walk along the corridor. Chance turned the jammer back on, marched up to the door and knocked on it loudly.

“Come on, come on,” he growled in his best approximation of an angry Scottish accent.

The door started to open. Chance kicked it as hard as he could. The door flew back, catching the man holding it a nasty crack on the chin. He fell backwards with a cry and lay still on the floor.

A second man was getting to his feet from an armchair in front of a large dark wood desk. His hand was inside his jacket pocket. But before he could draw his gun, Chance was across the room and swatted the man with his briefcase. There was an unpleasant crunch of bone and the man fell to the floor.

Chance looked round the room. But there was no one else there. He swore. This had to be the room – the presence of the guards confirmed it. Had they moved the ‘property’?

He had another minute, perhaps two at most. He couldn’t turn off the jammer again as there were sure to be cameras in this room – it looked like the manager’s office. Plush carpet, big desk, panelled walls, and a large abstract painting that reached almost from floor to ceiling and which you could bet concealed a big safe.

Safe.

Chance pulled the frame of the painting. It swung back and revealed a solid metal door. Probably the most secure safe in this part of the world, Chance thought. And he had at most a minute.

It took him forty-five seconds, with his ear pressed to an upturned glass from the desk as he listened for the click of the tumblers. Then the last one clicked into place and Chance swung open the heavy reinforced steel door.

A small frightened man with thinning grey hair stared out of the dark safe, blinking through small, round, pebble-lensed glasses.

Chance opened the briefcase and the man cowered away, back into the safe.

“It’s OK,” Chance told him. “Ardman sent me. I’m here to help you, not kill you. Now…” He pulled out the suit, the wig and the false beard. “You’ve got about twenty seconds to get these on.”

An unremarkable man of about forty walked nonchalantly out of the casino and down the steps towards a waiting car. With him was an older, smaller man who seemed nervous. Whereas the younger man was clean-shaven, the older man had a mass of dark curly hair and a bushy beard that almost completely concealed his features.

The first man paused to hand a couple of casino chips to the doorman and share a quick joke about easy money. The doorman wasn’t to know the chips had been in the casino safe just a minute earlier. The bearded man seemed impatient to be on his way.

The car was a silver Mercedes – big, fast, expensive. John Chance opened the back door to allow the man with the wig and false beard to climb inside with an audible sigh of relief.

The driver wound down the window. “Where to, Guvnor?” he asked in a mock Cockney accent.

“Don’t overdo it, Dex,” Chance said. Dex Halford was an old friend from his SAS days – the two of them had worked together more times than either cared to remember. “They let you drive with just one leg, do they?”

Halford gave a short laugh and slapped his leg. It was false from below the knee. “Car’s automatic,” he told Chance. “Though sadly I still have to be here.”

“Yes, well, I think it’s time you weren’t.”

“Problems?”

Chance shook his head. “Piece of cake. But tell Ardman that from now on I really am on holiday. If he wants anything else doing he can—” His words were drowned out by the strident sound of alarm bells from inside the casino.

“Enjoy the death run,” he shouted over the noise. Chance saw sudden fear and anxiety in the eyes of the small man in the back seat. “Don’t worry – that’s what we call this. When you get whisked away to a new life, a new identity. When you disappear for ever. The death run.”

“I’ll take good care of you, no fear,” Halford told to the man. “Say hi to the family,” he told Chance.

Chance slapped his hand on the roof of the car as Halford closed the window. The car screeched away and headed off into the night.

Chance watched the tail lights disappear into the darkness. Then he turned to the casino. The big Scotsman, Bannock, was on the steps looking round in fury and confusion. Behind him, Chance could see men in suits running back and forth. A woman with long auburn hair wearing a pale blue evening dress sipped her champagne and watched it all with amusement. For a moment her startling blue eyes locked with Chance’s. But he wasn’t interested.

He looked up at a window at the side of the casino. The window next to his own bedroom. Curtains billowed out over the balcony and two young faces looked down at him – both blond, a boy and a girl. They didn’t look pleased.

Chance headed quickly back into the casino, walking confidently through the noise and confusion towards the stairs up into the hotel. He clicked off the jammer in his pocket and smiled at a man shouting urgently into a radio.

“Now for the tricky bit,” Chance murmured.

1 (#udc61f0fc-478b-5357-808d-801fc1dda3d8)

It was hot and humid in Venice in the last week of August. One canal looked pretty much like another to Jade; one church looked pretty much like another; and the whole place smelled old and damp. It was probably better than hanging around in London with nothing to do till school started again, but if she had to eat any more pasta or ice cream, Jade reckoned there would be serious trouble.

As usual, it was difficult to know what Dad thought of it all. But since he’d brought them here he was presumably enjoying himself. They stayed in a small family-run hotel close to the Grand Canal. It amused Jade that the bar closed at nine in the evening and if Dad wanted a drink after that, he had to find the night porter.

Rich seemed to be enjoying himself. He greeted every new street or stretch of water, every café and old building with excitement. “Have you seen this?” he exclaimed with interest as they turned into a small square close to the canal.

“Oh yeah, look,” Jade muttered back. “Another church. Well, who’d have thought.” But she had to smile at his enthusiasm.

“Yeah, but they’re all different,” Rich told her. “I mean, talk about paintings.”

“You do that a lot,” she pointed out.

“Only takes a few minutes to look round,” Dad said. “We should do it while we’re here.”