The Cassandra Sanction by Mariani Scott

Author:Mariani, Scott [Mariani, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2015-12-17T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Four

Welcome to Britain. London was every bit as wet and cold as Hamburg had been.

The longest part of the journey had been getting from the sleepy Black Forest village to the nearest decent-sized airport, which had been a choice between Strasbourg over the French border to the north, Zurich to the south and Basel to the west. After a bit of calling around, in the end Basel had offered the earliest direct flight to Heathrow, and the cheapest for Raul, who insisted on paying for both one-way tickets. Ben had left the BMW in long-term parking at the airport, where it would be unlikely to be flagged up to the police for days, if not weeks. When the police did eventually find the stolen car, they’d get an extra surprise when they discovered the weapons in the boot. Ben didn’t like leaving them behind, and felt naked the whole time they were sitting in the departure lounge and on the flight, in case they were being followed.

But he’d spotted nobody suspicious among his fellow travellers, and they’d reached Heathrow without a single shot fired. Once they’d breezed through arrivals and exchanged a few hundred of their euros for pounds sterling to have some walking-around money, they jumped on a Piccadilly Line train direct from their terminal. Just under an hour later, they were experiencing the joys of a rainy afternoon in central London. Huddled crowds moving fast in all directions, noise and traffic fumes and confusion and roadworks and slippery pavements. Even to Ben’s hardened sensibilities, the place was a shock after the rural serenity of the Black Forest village they’d woken up in that morning. It was Raul’s first visit to London, and his verdict as they clambered into a taxicab and sped through the city was, ‘It’s, how would you say? An armpit.’

Raul was even less impressed with the district where Ben had the taxi driver drop them, in a backstreet off Pretoria Road in the dingy, crime-rotted heart of Tottenham. Even the cabbie seemed cagey about letting them off there. To Ben’s mind, it was the perfect setting for the next stage in his strategy.

‘Where have you brought us?’ Raul said, staring around him as he hunched his shoulders against the rain. Graffiti and boarded-up windows, windswept litter and remnants of drunks’ vomit gurgling down the gutters weren’t everyday sights back home in Frigiliana.

‘They call this area Little Russia,’ Ben said. ‘It was a ghetto for immigrant refugees after the 1917 revolution and became one of the most notorious dens of iniquity in London. You could hardly walk the streets without getting stabbed or shot. It’s gone downhill since then.’

‘Thank you for the history lesson. I’m still unclear as to what we’re doing here.’

Ben shrugged. ‘There’s so much gang and drug crime in the place, nobody even cares any more. The police just let them get on with it. Which makes it the best place I know of to nick a car.’

Raul frowned. ‘Nick? You mean steal?’

Ben looked at him.

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