Rogue

by James Swallow

  ‘Well, now . . .’ Farrier finished his drink and reached for his phone. ‘That’s something we can work with.’ He hesitated with the handset half-raised and gestured in the direction of the lounge. ‘Someone’s looking for you.’

  Marc turned to see Lucy walking through the open bar area. She caught sight of him and came out to the balcony.

  ‘Hey.’ She glanced at Farrier. ‘So I talked with head office in Monaco about releasing us to work with MI6 . . .’

  ‘Both of you?’ Farrier raised an eyebrow.

  ‘There was some pushback. At first, Delancort was reluctant to allow two employees to be placed in harm’s way.’

  ‘We do that all the time,’ said Marc. ‘How much did you tell them?’

  ‘Enough that Solomon offered to supply some additional resources.’

  Lucy had Farrier’s full attention now. ‘Such as?’

  ‘The Rubicon Group may not have a direct interest in this woman you’re hunting, but we do look after our own,’ she went on. ‘This is important to Marc, so it’s important to us. Rubicon is offering to assist the British government in apprehending this dangerous fugitive, in the interests of international stability.’ The last she said in a flat, rehearsed manner.

  Farrier gave a wry smirk. ‘You know, there was a time when I would have said no thanks, but to be honest, a bit more manpower would come in handy. The Joint Intelligence Committee has been cutting our budget to the bone.’

  ‘Welles won’t wear it,’ said Marc. ‘Bad enough you’re bringing me in.’

  ‘Oh, sod him. I have operational authority, not that tosser.’ Farrier offered Lucy a handshake, and she took it. ‘Good to be working with you.’

  ‘Likewise.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll set it up.’ Farrier raised his phone and gave Marc a nod as he walked away. ‘Get some rest, we’ll come and get you in the morning.’

  Marc shot Lucy a look when the other man was out of earshot.

  ‘What’s going on? You’ve pulled Rubicon into this now?’

  ‘Not me.’ Lucy made a hands-off motion. ‘Solomon. He said he owes you. And he’s the kind of man who makes good on his debts. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to play nice with MI6.’ She hesitated. ‘The faster we get this Grace chick in cuffs, the faster we can close the book on everything, right?’

  Marc frowned. ‘However this goes,’ he told her, ‘it’s not going to be that simple.’

  *

  Chin was afraid that his whole grand plan for the family getaway was collapsing.

  An evening walk up the beach had done nothing to supply the solution he so desperately needed, and he trudged dejectedly back towards the scruffy little villa.

  It had cost more than it was worth to bring his wife Tasanee and their son Jin to the resort at Prachuap Khiri Khan, even out of season, but he was anxious to mend their marriage. It had started badly, though, and gone downhill from there. Chin and Tasanee argued from the moment they left Bangkok, and the intermittent rain had only helped to sour the mood.

  While Jin played quietly, they quarrelled. Tasanee brought everything back to the same place, every time. You put your job before us.

  How many ways had he tried to explain it to her? The job is what keeps a roof over our head, it feeds and clothes us.

  But she had grown to resent him for it, and Chin found himself accepting extra duties, preferring that to spending time with his family. When he was home, he felt like he was constantly being judged, by Tasanee’s sharp glares and Jin’s glum sighs. At the office, working on thorny coding problems or the intricacies of database structure, Chin could believe he was actually achieving something.

  When he started to suspect that Tasanee was having an affair, he panicked. For all the distance between them, he still loved his wife, and the idea that she might take Jin and leave him for another man filled him with dread.

  The whole point of this sorry little getaway had been to reconnect, to remind them what they meant to one another, but it was failing.

  Chin was so wrapped up in his worries that he didn’t see the foreigner sitting on the porch until he was on top of him. He jerked back in shock and tried to collect himself.

  Even in the half-shadows, the stranger was imposing. He had a face carved from sandstone, hard edges and narrow eyes that gave him a feral aspect. Chin guessed he was an Arab, but little more than that. When he spoke, it was in accented, rumbling English.

  ‘It is late for a walk.’

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Chin shot a look into the villa. The doors leading inside were open, the breeze off the water shifting the thin curtains.

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ said the man, nodding towards the rooms where Chin had left Tasanee and Jin asleep.

  ‘What do you want?’ Chin glanced around, wondering who would hear him if he called for help. Most of the other villas were empty. ‘If you’re after money, we don’t have—’

  ‘You do not have much,’ said the man, as he reached for a black backpack. ‘That might have been exploited, but you are quite honourable in your own way. If someone offered a bribe, you would report it.’

  He produced a military-grade laptop computer, complete with a built-in satellite antenna.

  ‘Bribes?’ Chin shook his head. ‘What are you talking about?’

  The man went to his bag again, and when his hand came back there was a silenced pistol in it.

  ‘Open the computer.’ He glanced at the villa again. ‘If you do not do as I say, I will kill them both.’

  Chin managed a shaky nod and picked up the laptop with trembling hands. When the screen lit up, his stomach fell. He saw a remote relay of his office desktop displayed there, a mirror of the computer he used every day. The familiar field of blue with the globe-scales-sword symbol for Interpol in the middle.

  His job in the agency’s Bangkok liaison office as a minor civilian functionary was unglamorous, the work of a data-pusher, really. When they first met, Tasanee thought he was some kind of secret agent, but the dull reality of his work soon disabused her of that fantasy. Chin helped Interpol keep records of their investigators and their respective assignments in correct order, a job as unexciting as it sounded.

  ‘A hacker could be paid to penetrate the firewalls,’ said the man, ‘but the simpler solution is someone like you.’ He tossed Chin a flash drive. ‘Use your log-in and password to access the personnel database, then insert the drive.’

  ‘I . . . I can’t . . .’

  ‘Do you know who I am?’

  The man rose to his feet and stepped into the light.

  Chin blinked as recognition suddenly came to him. He had seen this man before, on the ‘wall of infamy’ back at the office, his face on a Red Notice.

  ‘You’re . . . Omar Khadir!’

  The notorious terrorist was one of Interpol’s most wanted. Chin didn’t know the full story, but rumours said Khadir had led a campaign of suicide bombings across Europe for an Islamic extremist group, building to a planned strike in Washington DC that would have killed the President and hundreds of Americans, had it not been thwarted at the last moment.

  It was unreal, impossible to believe that an internationally wanted mass murderer was standing there in front of him. And yet, there he was – and Chin knew full well what he was capable of.

  ‘If I must prove my seriousness,’ said Khadir, ‘the boy will die first.’

  ‘No,’ Chin gasped. Sick with fear, he typed in the security codes. ‘Look, look, I am doing it.’ Fighting off the tremors in his hands, Chin used his access to connect remotely to the Interpol mainframe and plugged in the drive. He saw a progress bar fill as several megabytes of data were transmitted to the agency’s central server, uploading a new personnel file. ‘W-what is this for?’

  ‘The final preparation for something larger.’

  Khadir gave the answer dismissively, as if this had been a task beneath his skills.

  ‘Please don’t hurt my family,’ Chin bleated. />
  Suddenly, nothing else mattered. All the arguments seemed trivial and pointless.

  Khadir took back the laptop and the drive, exchanging it with an envelope.

  ‘It is understandable, what you did.’

  Numbly, Chin opened the envelope and found dozens of photos inside. He pulled out a few and the first thing he saw was an image of Tasanee’s face. Her eyes closed, her mouth open in a gasp of pleasure. The picture had been taken with a long-lens camera, and it captured some of the man whose face was buried between her breasts.

  ‘How emasculating for a dedicated father and breadwinner to see that,’ said Khadir. ‘Of course it would drive you to violence. You would lose all reason.’

  The photos became more graphic as they spilled from Chin’s hand. Tasanee and a man with darker skin, a foreigner, their rough sex taking them all over some nondescript hotel room.

  ‘You . . .’

  None of the photos showed the man’s face, but there was no one else it could be. Chin shook his head, welling up with tears of rage and shame.

  ‘You could not let her disgrace you. And you could not let your son live with that stigma.’ In a sudden burst of motion, Khadir grabbed Chin and dragged him into the house, still speaking in the same quiet tone. ‘There was only one thing left for you to do.’

  Chin struggled, but it was pointless. He was small and unfit, and this man was like a lion.

  Then Chin’s gaze found the glitter of light on a puddle of blood, and he froze. Tasanee lay on her back, eyes open and staring at nothing, a dark entry wound in her throat. Jin was crumpled on the floor close by, and his son’s nightshirt was soaked through with crimson.

  Chin thrashed and clawed, but Khadir was already forcing his hand to grasp his pistol, pushing the barrel of the silencer into his cheek.

  ‘It is a tragedy,’ he said, and pulled the trigger.

  SIX

  The landscape beyond the runway at RAF Akrotiri was flat and open to the elements. A dry wind brought a tang off the salt lake to the north that Lucy could taste in the back of her throat.

  Sunset was a couple of minutes away, and the lights on the perimeter of the Air Force base were burning steadily into the approaching evening. She walked towards the concrete expanse of the turning apron near a cluster of sand-drab buildings. Something about being on a military post called up a whole subset of behaviour patterns in Lucy that she was barely aware of. She carried herself a little differently, took in her surroundings in a more watchful manner. Familiar patterns, deep-rooted reflexes trained into her by the US Army, they came back easily and quickly, slotting into place.

  Marc was out there, talking to his MI6 buddy, and the low mutter of their voices carried to her. She made a point of forcing herself to relax. They were in that phase of an operation where the adrenaline was still tanked in reserve, the waiting and the bullet-counting part of the deal. It could go long or it could be over in moments. The secret was not to over-anticipate. Just be ready.

  Akrotiri was like any one of a dozen airbases Lucy had passed through in her career as an operator, one of those weird little kingdoms that belonged to a nation completely separate from the country that owned the dirt it stood on.

  Like the haft of a broken sword, the peninsula extended from the southern coastline of Cyprus, ending at Cape Zevgari and Cape Gata at the azure waters of the Mediterranean. To the east of the thick outcrop of land was Episkopi Bay, and the cantonment that shared the name. To the west along the belly of the island republic was the Bay of Akrotiri, the borderline for a territory belonging to another nation that was over three thousand miles away.

  On the flight out, Lucy had read the sparse acclimation briefing from their RAF hosts. Since Cypriot independence from the British Empire in 1960, Akrotiri had remained one of two ‘sovereign base areas’ in the country, held tight by the UK’s military for obvious tactical and strategic reasons. Close to the Middle East and the vital waterway of the Suez Canal, Royal Air Force and British Army outposts stood in place to project power into the region, while US interests had to steam in aircraft carriers to rattle their sabres in the direction of Syria, Iran and Iraq. Decades after getting self-governance, the intricate politics of Cyprus had grown more complex, but still the bases remained as dislocated bits of old empire repurposed for a different age.

  The sun was disappearing below the horizon, and Lucy scanned the darkening sky. She found what she was looking for in short order, spotting the running lights of a HondaJet HA-420 in the direction of the Limassol Salt Lake. The Rubicon aircraft was a compact, swept-wing executive flyer, its low-emission engines making its approach near-silent. The breeze pulled down the high whine of turbofans, and she knew who would be at the stick as it made a lazy, yet perfectly timed turn towards the runway.

  ‘Ari’s showing off,’ said Marc, catching the same conclusion. ‘You watch, he’ll land it on points, just to look good in front of the crabs.’

  ‘The what?’ Lucy shot him a look. Since they had teamed up with the other Brits, Marc kept slipping back into UK service slang that she didn’t follow. ‘Crabs?’ She mimed pincers with her fingers.

  Farrier jerked a thumb at the RAF crew working out on the flight-line by the nearby hangar.

  ‘Navy nickname for those guys.’

  She frowned, not following the logic.

  ‘So what do they call navy pukes like Dane here?’

  ‘Andrew,’ Marc said, checking the time on his battered dive watch.

  ‘That makes as much sense as anything,’ she replied, and decided not to press the issue.

  ‘Well, we’re all spooks to them now,’ Farrier offered, as the HondaJet touched down and slowed, air-brakes flaring open.

  For the most part, the officers and enlisted men that Lucy had encountered since their arrival in Cyprus had been cordial but distant. They gave her the kind of long-eyed looks that suggested they were wondering which three-letter agency she was working for, but they were experienced enough with those kind of visitors not to ask any questions. One of the facts not in the RAF briefing packet was that Akrotiri had a quiet history of hosting black ops missions and other shady stuff since the early days of the Cold War.

  The HondaJet, painted in a dark blue livery with the Rubicon logo down the fuselage, rolled to a precise halt as Marc had predicted, stopping on a dime right in front of them.

  ‘Smaller than I expected,’ said Farrier. ‘I thought your boss had an airliner, or something.’

  ‘An Airbus,’ said Marc. ‘It’s pretty slick. They base it out of Nice – bringing it here wouldn’t exactly be discreet, would it?’

  ‘True enough.’

  The jet fell silent, and when the hatch dropped open, the first out onto the apron was the pilot. In his fifties, Hollywood-trim and good-looking in the manner of an older leading man, Ari Silber wore a short-sleeved shirt with captain’s boards, tan trousers and deck shoes. He took a deep breath of the salty air and ran a hand through his tight, greying curls.

  ‘We’re late,’ he began, with an apologetic shrug. ‘Lot of eyes in the sky, had to come the long way around.’

  Lucy nodded at that. The waters around Cyprus had more than their fair share of warships, vessels from half a dozen nations showing the flag around the Syrian and Lebanese coasts. But for Silber, navigating this piece of airspace was old hat. Before he had been recruited by Ekko Solomon to fly privately for Rubicon, he had served in the Israeli Air Corps as a pilot and later squadron leader in F-15I Ra’am strike fighters. Silber didn’t fit the Top Gun stereotype of jet jockeys that most people expected, and Lucy liked that about him. He looked more the kind of man who should’ve been picking up a Best Actor award, or charming the panties off wealthy divorcees.

  ‘Children,’ he said, taking in Marc and Lucy with a fatherly nod, then he approached Farrier and shook his hand. ‘Captain Aristotle Silber, call me Ari.’

  ‘John,’ said the other Brit. ‘Good to meet you.’

  ‘Pleasure.’ Ari loo
ked around, taking it in, sniffing the air. He grinned, and looked straight at Lucy. ‘Funny, you forget how much you miss it.’ He waved his hand, like a wine connoisseur taking in a fine bouquet. ‘The smell of JP-8 fuel. To me, the perfume of an old flame. Sets my blood racing.’

  Marc mentioned Ari’s previous career, and Farrier gave a nod.

  ‘I get you.’

  But the pilot was already looking past the other man, towards the deployment area, where a pair of sleek RAF fighters were being worked on by their ground crews.

  ‘What’s this? Lightnings, yes?’

  Another detail from the briefing was the mention of British F-35 jets deployed at Akrotiri as part of Operation Shader, the ongoing military effort against ISIS and Islamic militants in the local region. Ari looked at the aircraft with a mix of avarice and admiration.

  ‘I’ll stretch my legs,’ said the pilot, and he wandered away towards the dart-like supersonic fighters, looking for one of his own kind to swap war stories with.

  ‘Better tell the RAF lads to watch him,’ said Marc, semi-seriously. ‘They turn their backs and he’ll take one of those birds for a joyride.’

  He moved to climb into the HondaJet, as another man appeared in the hatchway.

  ‘This is Malte Riis,’ said Lucy, for Farrier’s benefit. ‘Our ground transit and security specialist.’

  ‘Hello,’ said Malte, his expression as neutral as ever, and it was clear he wasn’t going to expand on that.

  The Finn was muscular but not overly so, lean around the face and hard-eyed. He wore jeans, boots and a light jacket, and on a street in any major city you would have lost him in the crowd in seconds. He had that ability to fade into the background, perfected during his time as an undercover cop in his native Helsinki. Malte could drive pretty much anything with wheels and he was good in a fight, but he gave new meaning to the word ‘taciturn’.

  Lucy saw that he was carrying a Rubicon-issue gear crate, and intuited that he was looking for their staging area. She pointed towards the hangar.

  ‘In there.’