Chapter One

August in New York. A sweaty evening, zoo class on a crowded jumbo jet, waiting for take-off at JFK. Hour-old rain smoked off the tarmac like oil from a hot pan. Now movement, finally, after an hour’s delay. The 747 began to accelerate, engines whining. Droplets ran diagonally across the windows, the runway lines dashed beneath like tracer fire, overhead lockers rattled. KLM flight 648 lifted off, destination Amsterdam. Three hundred and fifty passengers began to relax, thinking their problems were over.

Not a chance.

John Edward Davies sat in aisle seat 38C. He looked just as a John Edward Davies should: ordinary, anonymous, forgettable. A name designed for a false passport. Under the seat in front of him he had a small zip-up bag. Inside was a Tupperware box, its lid held tightly in place with three thick rubber bands. That is where ordinariness ended.

 The food box was, in Pentagon-speak, ‘a cost effective weapon delivery system’. So light, so innocuous. Seemingly empty. Almost, but not quite. It contained no electronics, no clock, no explosives, no chemicals, no poison gas, no unusual bacteria or viruses, no radioactive materials. Nothing any terrorist had ever used. Nothing to trigger airport security. Nothing noticeable on an X-ray machine, no scent for a sniffer dog, no metal for a metal detector.

Yet there was more death in that box than in any bomb. John Davies had done his homework. The contents of the box could kill more people than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Just much more subtly. Much more slowly.

For the next few hours all he had to kill was time. To stay calm and keep quiet. Think ordinary, be ordinary, and keep his feet pressed tight around that box. Next to him, in seat 38B, a curly-haired man sat tearing pages from the in-flight magazine, folding them into origami swans and doves, balancing them on his tray table. Before Davies could turn away, the neighbour caught his eye and began a conversation. He was Max, a  sculptor, an American. John Davies nodded and smiled at the right moments, saying little until finally getting the chance to turn back to a magazine. Outside, the sunset crystallised to a vibrant orange brushstroke on a prussian blue horizon as the plane slid out into the Atlantic night.

At exactly ten thirty New York time Davies took a bottle of pills from his pocket. He opened it, removed the cotton wool, tapped out an orange tablet with a tiny blue dot at its centre. Swilled it down with a glass of water. In a small diary he flicked to the calendar page for August. Circled the day, noted the time, just as he had for the last three weeks, just as he would have to do for several more weeks.

Fate has a habit of barging in on all precision plans. A middle-aged woman pushed past the drinks trolley in the aisle and knocked Davies’s  elbow. The pill bottle tipped and orange tablets bounced everywhere. The woman apologised, lowered herself to her fleshy knees and started scrambling on the floor to pick them up. The flight attendant joined in. More unwanted attention. Davies told them: it’s okay, I’ll get them. Leave it to me. Just vitamin pills, no problem. But they carried on, making small talk, and tautening his temper.

Then the woman moved the zip-up bag to reach a tablet. His legs twitched involuntarily, and he snarled. I said leave it. She looked up at him and in her wide eyes was surprise, flecked with fear.

When she’d gone he counted the pills silently from his tray table into the bottle. Eleven missing. Rattled and angry, now Davies just wanted to do it now and have it finished with. But he knew he couldn’t. Not yet. Not until the right time.

After the film, more drinks, and then the irritating tangle of headphones and eyemasks, blankets and bedsocks. After all that. When the lights were dimmed and the artificial rules of jet sleep descended. Only then could Davies get up, and do what he had to do. What he had so long dreamed of doing.

A thin smile played on his lips. Out of the window all light had been swallowed by the ocean of night. A world heading into darkness, at a speed beyond nature’s design. 

* * *

 It was midnight New York time when Pharmstar Corporation chief executive John Sanford Erskine III left his World Business Class seat to go to the toilet. He walked past the sleeping forms of his personal assistant Penny Ryan and Don Quiggan, chief financial officer. Across the aisle Bob Mazzio, head of mergers and acquisitions, was watching a movie on a personal screen.

Inside the rest room Erskine straightened his silk tie, brushed the shoulders of his jacket, and patted cologne on his tanned cheeks. At six foot four, he needed to stoop a little for the mirror. He checked his leonine profile in the mirror, tucked a paper towel into his collar and carefully brushed and flossed his teeth.

With a small silver comb he flicked the last two or three errant hairs to the correct side. Satisfied, he smiled. Fifty eight years old and he still had a thick mane of hair. Once jet black, now it was grey and shot with white above his ears.

From a monogrammed leather bag he took a small jar of cream. With a fresh face towel twisted on a finger, he took a dab and smoothed it along his bushy black eyebrows. Once the wayward hairs were in place he dabbed off the excess and used a hairdryer to set them. The eyebrows emphasised his piercing blue eyes, but Erskine had more subtle uses for them. With tiny arches, inflexions and frowns, what he called his calligraphy of influence, he was able to steer a meeting without raising his voice, and engineer a seduction without lowering it.

Iron Jack Erskine, they called him. He wowed investors and swayed bankers, he overawed rivals and intimidated opponents. Oppose Iron Jack, it was said in the pharmaceutical industry, and the odds were a thousand to one you would lose.

Trouble is, some enemies never look at the odds

Chapter Two

While victims sleep, predators hunt.

It was 2.15 a.m. in New York and 8.15 a.m. in Amsterdam. Davies retrieved his zip-up bag from beneath the seat and pressed his fingers through the material, to feel the seal around the box lid. Intact. His curly-haired neighbour lay slumped under a blanket, a paper swan in his hand. Across the aisle a bald businessman lay snoring with his laptop computer still open, its cursor blinking for attention.

The economy cabin was like a darkened battlefield: sprawled bodies, splayed limbs, gaping mouths, and across the aisle a blanket spattered with red wine. In a few places reading lamps knifed the gloom, illuminating old biddies with permed hair and spectacles on chains, ploughing through the latest thriller. If only they knew where the action really was.

His fingers reached inside the zip bag and eased off the rubber bands. The lid was still tight. He put the bag on his shoulder and headed towards the curtain partitioning off business class. There was a flight attendant preparing drinks in the kitchen beyond, but she didn’t look up as he padded past. Five feet further on was the staircase reaching up to the business class upper deck. The target area.

Davies placed his feet slowly, to make sure the metal stairs didn’t ring as he climbed. Three stairs below the top, he stopped. Wide soft seats, reclined with bodies upon them. Soft, vulnerable, sleeping. He lifted the box from the bag. Took one last glance above him. No-one stirred. No-one was watching. Carefully, he took off the lid/

Buy the book

Back to top