Chapter 1

There are few words I can say about the punctuality of others, that do not make me look like a martinet. When expected, and not supplied, it can be damned annoying. When the person you are expecting supplies it, and you need it to facilitate later plans, it can be an utter pleasure.

The man calling himself Arnold Berthold, was on time almost to the second. He did not know the importance his punctuality had to my, our, mission. 'Mrs. Graham' was looking at me with ill-disguised contempt yet she didn't know the complete plan, only her small part of it.

When our target came around the hotel lobby corner with his customary strutting gait, I smiled for the first time for what felt like days, drawing him to me with a welcoming handshake, a 'man hug', and dual cheek kisses.

"On time, as usual, Mr. Berthold. It is lovely to have a person one can rely on. Mrs. Graham, Mr. Berthold's luggage will be with a following porter. Tip him and please facilitate it to arrive at Mr. Berthold's suite. Also see to Miss Ferguson's whereabouts if you please. She should be at home office and expecting your call. She knows what is required."

This was the third and final meeting. In the first two, we had ironed out financial and security issues. His agreed upon, two personal bodyguards, were in the background. They had a three hundred and sixty degree field of fire, though their firearms were not well hidden. The Uzi one was holding was always so hard to disguise, the M16 used by the other, impossible. The plan was for them to join us on the twenty-fifth floor of the hotel, once they were satisfied that Mr. Berthold's security from outside attack was complete. As requested, both were British ex-paras and were remarkably efficient.

I smiled benignly again as Arnold Berthold strutted behind me at my left heel like a well-trained blue healer cattle-dog, towards the elevator doors. I moved aside and prompted him to enter ahead of me. I am a gentleman, after all. This placed me in front of the lift door, facing the door itself, when it closed with him behind me.

A tall dark-haired chap was already at the rear of the lift, having come up from the basement level. We did the ignoring that one does, in these 'close encounter' situations; as did he.

Up to now it has been unnecessary for Berthold to utter a word as everything was as he had expected. He also did not utter a sound as he collapsed against me. I turned to hold him erect. Sergeant 1st Class Hanson reached and held him under his arms, as I dipped to grasp his knees. The door opened on the seventh floor where Corporals Riley and Pozywio (wearing London Ambulance Service uniforms) were standing beside Berthold's luggage, and an hospital stretcher. The sergeant and I set Mr Berthold on it. Riley passed me a doctor's black bag and stethoscope that I hung around my neck, while Pozywio gave Hanson a ubiquitous white medical coat, which he immediately donned.

This floor was officially under renovation, and therefor unoccupied, it being a Sunday. Seeing the good sergeant had made the usual security camera inoperable, it made the complete operation unobserved. I sent the lift, empty, to the twenty fifth floor, where he was expected. I had punched buttons for sixteen stops on the way, delaying any interruptions to our mission.

We placed a white London Hospital Service blanket over the stretchered body, covering it entirely, especially the face. The two privates, clad in long white linen jackets and white trousers, carried it to another elevator at the end of the corridor. A lit sign was in place that read, 'STAFF ONLY.' It was used exclusively by in-house security and service staff ... oh, yeah: and medically companioned corpses. This lift's camera had been inoperable for more than a year and the staff appear to prefer it this way. The doors were wide open, held so by a length of doweling, supplied and kept in one corner of the lift by hotel security for their own convenience and for just this purpose.

We entered with the luggage crowding us, and were carried to the loading bay in the under sub-basement. On the way down two separate hotel employees, on different floors, stopped the lift. Finding it full, they waited for it to come back to them. It appeared that a body being removed for medical reasons from the hotel, using the non-public route, was standard procedure.

As the elevator doors opened for the third time, this time on the loading bay dock itself, an ambulance was reversing towards us. It stopped a few metres short of the truck bed height raised loading dock. Gunnery Sergeant Ferguson swung out of the driver's side and opened the rear doors, her attractive, well-shaped, muscular legs were being closely inspected by a truck driver. He was unloading cartons and crates of assorted fresh fruits and vegetables, onto a mostly full timber palette. The manual palette truck was being pumped up by an hotel employee, to be tucked into an open cargo lift. That lift only went as far as the food storage area and kitchen floor. Neither man would later remember anything about the people on the dock, except the sexy girl driving the ambulance.

The sergeant's hem slid up to well above mid-thigh and she was careless of her modesty, by my order if there were witnesses at the dock as we arrived, and as she left the driver's seat and opened the rear doors. She then slid out and lowered the ambulance's wheeled stretcher to waist height, then waited as the two privates carried the still body down the loading bay steps at the far end of the dock. Sergeant Hanson passed the luggage down to Ferguson who stacked the bags into the rear of ambulance.

They made a very professional transfer from the hotel's stretcher to the ambulance's gurney, and the sergeant slid it directly into the interior, with the undercarriage automatically folding out of the way. I made a perfunctory inspection of the patient. Yep, he hadn't moved a hair after his injection of the same drug, Propofol, that killed Michael Jackson, and in much the same dosage.

The 1st sergeant entered the ambulance with the 'patient' and luggage then the 'Gunny' slammed the rear doors behind him. She jumped back into the driver's seat, making her underwear subtly evident to the witnesses, then she drove off quickly with the lights flashing and no siren but with a slight squeal of tyres on the steel trowel smooth concrete floor. The two sergeant's task was the disappearance of the body and accompanying luggage. My influence ended as soon as the ambulance doors closed.

The privates and I walked casually over to a white sedan with a fictitious but authentic appearing private hospital logo on its door. It was parked in a bay signed 'For Official Vehicle's Parking Only.' Pozywio made the car 'beep, beep' with his security button and climbed into the driver's door. Riley entered the passenger door and myself the rear. Amazingly, it started at the first turn. I'm never going to hear the end of this morning's fiasco from the old bag.

We drove from the shelter of the underground loading bay, into the steady rain. We stopped, with the rain camouflaging the vehicle, as the three of us reached through the windows and removed the magnetic genuine appearing logos. On the way through the hotel's service entrance, we passed two more of Berthold's security team, with their Uzis half hidden under their rain gear, but at the ready. We went around the block to stop under the awning in the front of the hotel, to the waiting 'Mrs. Graham', aka Colonel Anderson.

Colonel Anderson joined me in the rear, as the three of us removed our white medical clothing. In all, the total operation had taken less than ten minutes. The only words spoken were my greetings to the soon-to-be-if-not-already late Mr. 'Berthold'. He was probably still alive, but that sort of overdose would kill a bull elephant. He'll never be seen breathing in public, again.