by Adrian Wills
Pete laughed at the joke, but when Trent hung up he had a terrible feeling that his friend had been deadly serious.
*
Blake made himself as comfortable as he could in his shelter, and tried to grab a few hours’ sleep, cosseted in his thick Army sleeping bag, and with a woollen hat pulled tightly over his head and ears. He managed two hours, and rose at five to boil a saucepan of water on the camping stove for a brew, and to heat up one of the ration packs.
After eating, he crawled to his observation point on the ridge, and flicked on the monitor he'd left set up in the grass. The picture on the screen flickered and stabilised. It showed a black and white image of the hallway in Stoneleigh Cottage. A fish-eye lens captured the front door, the bottom of the stairs, and a section of the dining room.
Then he unwound a set of headphones from his pocket, and plugged them into his smartphone, which was picking up feeds from the three audio devices in the electrical sockets. He tried them all in turn, starting with the two downstairs, and then switching to the device in Proctor's room where he heard the rustle of bedclothes and the slow breath of his agent sleeping.
Blake was still annoyed that he'd not been able to place a bug in Mike Clark's room. But he reminded himself it was better than being caught red-handed in the cottage and blowing the entire operation. Against the odds, Clark had decided not to return to bed, but had tramped downstairs after waking in the middle of the night. Blake hadn't waited to find out why, fleeing from the house and quietly closing the window behind him. As far as he could tell, Proctor and Clark were none the wiser that he'd ever been there.
Blake flicked through his phone to a map of the vicinity, showing the cottage at the centre of the page surrounded by fields and the village away to the southeast. A blue dot was flashing near the house, marking the position of the red Renault thanks to a device Blake had attached under a wheel arch that would track it's movement.
Happy that all the devices were working correctly, Blake grabbed the scoping telescope, and set it up angled towards the cottage. Then he took a deep breath, prepared himself mentally, and settled in for a long wait.
Chapter 26
Harry Patterson moved slowly through the security checks in the reception of Thames House feeling as if he was being strangled by his tie, and resolved to remove it the moment he was behind his desk. After flashing his pass to a security officer and pushing his way through a controlled barrier, he ducked through a side door and took the back stairs up to the first floor, fiddling to release the top button of his shirt. The stuffy formality of his new clothes was symptomatic of the claustrophobic environment in which he now found himself. It was ironic that he yearned for the freedoms of the military, where no one had questioned his motives or methods as long as he delivered results. By contrast, his masters in MI5 wanted to keep a tight rein on his operations, with constant demands for reports and methodologies. He was swamped under a flood of e-mails and dossiers.
His personal assistant, Heather, had already unlocked his office; he wasn't allowed to keep a key. The door swung open on well-oiled hinges, and he headed straight for the coffee machine, dropping his attaché case by his desk. The coffee was strong and black. A Columbian brew in a pot that was never allowed to run dry. That was one of the few perks he enjoyed these days.
At his desk, he fired up his laptop, and prepared himself for the deluge of e-mails and memos he knew would be waiting for his attention. Intelligence updates dropped into his inbox throughout the night, providing a detailed analysis of political developments and crises around the world, prepared by an unseen army Patterson imagined were slaving away in an airless underground bunker somewhere deep beneath his office. He was supposed to read each briefing note in detail, but in truth he skim read the ones that caught his fancy and deleted the others.
The computer screen lit up, and Patterson pulled up his chair with a sigh. He yanked off his tie, and shoved it into his top drawer as he scanned through the latest missives. One in particular stood out among the rest. Although he recognised the name of the sender, it was the subject line "Holiday Cottage" that caught his attention.
Patterson opened it without hesitation.
Hi Harry,
Thought I'd drop you a note about the cottage. I've had a good look around, and I'm sure it's going to be perfect for you. I checked the sockets in the living room and kitchen, and took a look at the light fitting in the hallway. Everything seems to be working fine.
Blake's coded message was unambiguous to Patterson. It meant he'd successfully fitted the audio bugs in two rooms at the cottage where he'd located Proctor, and installed a video circuit in the entrance hall.
The socket in the first bedroom is also fine, but access to the second bedroom was problematic. It was a hurried job in the end, but all is fine. The council remain unaware.
That was an issue. If one of the bedrooms was unconnected, Blake's surveillance operation would be severely curtailed. It was unlike Blake not to finish a job, but he'd known the man long enough to know that he must have had good reason.
I took the liberty of servicing your old car. It needs a little work, but I'll keep track of progress.
Best wishes
Dan
At least Blake, who'd written under his alias Daniel Jackson, had managed to fit a tracking device to Proctor's red Renault. Patterson didn't bother with a response. He was about to delete the message when the phone on his desk rang.
'Colonel Patterson, the deputy director general would like a catch-up.' The way his PA enunciated her words reminded Patterson of his school matron.
'Thank you, Heather.'
Sir Richard had insisted on being kept personally updated on the Deep Sleepers programme ever since he had sanctioned it. It had become his pet project and that meant Patterson had to provide a running commentary on developments, even if there were none.
'I checked your diary and told him you would be free at ten-thirty this morning.' Having access to the diaries of all six of the intelligence officers she'd been assigned, Heather took pride in keeping them organised.
Patterson sighed inwardly. It left less than ninety minutes to pull together a briefing note on Blake's progress. Ninety minutes to compose something coherent enough to keep his boss happy, but without compromising Blake's operation. He dare not mention the bomb plot that Blake had spoken of. Sir Richard would have to be content with an anodyne report about Proctor's unexpected move to the country. Patterson opened a blank page on his computer and began to type.
Chapter 27
Settled in the back seat of a taxi streaming along a busy three-lane highway on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Lucy Chapman and her husband, Peter, were lost in their thoughts. A string of beads swung hypnotically from the rear view mirror as they darted through the traffic, dodging cars, lorries, and vans heading towards the high rise blocks of the city looming large on the horizon. The air in the cab provided a cool relief from the stifling heat that had struck them when they'd landed at the airport, a stark contrast to the chilly, damp weather they'd left behind in London twelve hours earlier. They'd arranged the trip on the spur of the moment, hastily arranged after the news that Nick's luggage had been discovered on the Amazon, and undeterred by the lack of assistance from the Brazilian embassy.
'You here on holidays?' their driver asked, breaking the silence and jolting Lucy out of her reverie. He was a middle-aged man with a paunch that strained at his Hawaiian shirt, and a bald spot that he'd tried to cover over with strands of greasy, black hair. He was gripping the steering wheel lightly with one hand, the other arm resting on the back of the passenger seat.
'Hmm?’ said Lucy, sensing his gaze on her. She found a pair of tired brown eyes staring at her in the mirror.
'It's a nice place to stay,' the driver repeated. 'You come before?'
Lucy turned to her husband for support, unsure how to respond. He smiled sympathetically and took her hand.
'We've actually come to look for
somebody,' said Peter, sparing his wife the awkward conversation she didn't want to have.
The driver's eyes flicked from the road back to the mirror. 'Who you lost?'
'Lucy's brother. He travelled to Brazil, but he's not been seen since he left London. We don't know what happened to him after he got off the plane, so we're here hoping to find some answers. But to be honest, we haven't a clue where to start.'
'Why he come to Brazil?'
Peter leaned forwards to hear the driver over the noise of the engine and hiss of the air conditioning. 'He was travelling.'
'A backpacker?'
'Yes, that's right. We think he was planning to explore the Amazon.'
'Lots of backpacker in Brazil,' said the driver. 'But no so many take taxi. Too much expensive.' He rubbed his finger and thumb together in the universal sign for money.
'Yes,' said Peter, slumping back in his seat.
They sat in silence for the rest of the journey to their budget hotel near Copacabana Beach, where the driver pulled hard on the handbrake and swung around in his seat.
'I help you,' he said. Two large sweat patches were spreading from under his arms despite the coolness of the cab. Several of his teeth were missing. The few that remained were no more than black stumps. 'I help find your brother,' he repeated, as Lucy stared blankly at him.
'Oh, I see,' said Peter.
'I have friends who might know what happened. You have picture?'
'Yes, of course.' Lucy snatched up her handbag and scrambled through the contents.
'You go to hotel and I wait for you here. You bring picture?'
'Yes, thank you. That would be great. Give us five minutes and we'll be right back.' Lucy slipped out of the car and was immediately struck by the oppressive heat.
Peter paid the driver and included a large tip for helping to unload their bags.
'My name is Eduardo - Eduardo Oliveira,' said the driver, shaking Peter's hand enthusiastically and grinning like a maniac. 'Pleased be at your service.'
An hour later, Lucy and Peter were back in the taxi, stuck in traffic, surrounded by a cacophony of car horns and angry shouting. The way ahead was blocked by a procession of vehicles struggling to make their way through a tiny back road that snaked through a densely populated shantytown. Eduardo was leaning out of his window and had joined in the shouting match, berating some unseen culprit. Every few seconds, he slammed the heel of his hand into the horn in the centre of the steering wheel.
Eventually, they crept forward until they passed an open-backed truck, which had pulled up in the narrow street, leaving barely a car's width to pass. Two men were struggling with an unwieldy wooden wardrobe. As the taxi inched by, Eduardo screamed a torrent of abuse in Portuguese at the men who stopped momentarily to argue back.
Clear of the obstruction, they drove deeper into the city, where scruffy-looking buildings crowded the streets. A spaghetti tangle of electrical cables criss-crossed between the houses, and lines of washing were strung from balconies.
'Is it much farther, Eduardo?' Lucy shouted, over the whine of the engine.
'Just up here.' Eduardo had promised to take them to meet an acquaintance, who ran a popular backpackers' hostel and who had recognised the description of the young Briton.
They pulled up outside a nondescript townhouse next to a shop selling fruit from tables laid out on the pavement.
'We here,' Eduardo announced, theatrically.
He stabbed a stubby finger at a plastic doorbell at the side of a wooden door set into a white rendered wall. It was answered by an overweight man in his late forties, who greeted Eduardo with a broad smile and a friendly handshake. They exchanged a few enthusiastic words in Portuguese before Eduardo introduced the couple.
'This my good friend, Miguel Barros, who owns hostel,' he said.
'We're hoping you can help me find my brother,' Lucy blurted out.
'Yes, of course,' Barros replied, waving them inside. A stubby cigarette was burning between his fingers, and tufts of coarse hair poked out from around the top of a vest that might once have been white.
They followed him in single file along a short corridor to a reception desk hidden under piles of old newspapers and discoloured coffee cups.
'Did you bring a picture of your brother?' Barros asked.
Lucy produced a dog-eared photograph of Nick from her bag. It had been taken in the year before he'd left for university when they'd spent the day in the park with a hastily purchased picnic of bread and cheese, washed down with a bottle of warm Chardonnay. She remembered how excited Nick had been at the prospect of starting college. Like a seven-year-old on the night before Christmas, she'd joked with him.
'His name's Nick Richards. Nicholas.'
Barros took the picture and sucked on his bottom lip. 'Yes, I know him. He was here for two days only.' He spoke without looking up. 'It's definitely him.'
Lucy glanced at her husband, hardly daring to believe what she was hearing.
'How can you be so sure?' said Peter.
Barros looked up from the photo, and seemed to notice Lucy's husband for the first time. 'I remember because he was a nice guy. Quiet. Kept himself to himself,' he said.
'Did he tell you why he was here? Where he was going?' Lucy fired out the questions.
Before the hostel owner could answer, footsteps sounded on the stairs at the end of the hallway. Two young Australians chatting noisily appeared from the stairwell and squeezed past. Lucy watched as they let themselves out and slammed the front door behind them.
'We talked a little when he arrived,' said Barros. 'He was going to the Amazon, but was in Rio for a few days before he left. I remember him because he paid for five nights, but left after two.'
Lucy's eyes widened, the blackness of her pupils swallowing her bright blue irises. She grasped for her husband's arm, waiting for Barros to elaborate, but didn't register the fleeting glance between Barros and Eduardo.
'He told me he was going to visit Pao de Acucar, but never came back.'
'Sugarloaf Mountain?' said Peter.
'Yes, he was going to take the cable car to the top. I told him it has the most wonderful views.'
'So when did you realise he was missing?' asked Lucy.
Barros shifted in his chair. 'I think it was a day or so later. I found his room empty.'
'Did he leave any of his things?'
'No. Everything was gone.'
'Everything? Even his rucksack?' Lucy frowned.
'Yes, he'd even made his bed before he left.'
'Why would he pack and take his rucksack for a sightseeing trip up Sugarloaf Mountain? It doesn't make any sense,' said Lucy, turning to her husband.
Peter shrugged.
'I'm afraid that's all I can tell you.' Barros rose from the chair. 'Good luck in finding your brother. He was a very nice man.'
Eduardo took the cue. 'Thank you, Miguel. Very helpful.' He ushered Lucy and Peter to the front door.
'Just one more question. Please?' said Lucy.
Eduardo hesitated as Lucy resolutely refused to move. His eyes flickered towards Barros.
'I was wondering if you called the police when you realised Nick was missing?'
'People come and people go all the time. I didn't think it was necessary. I'm sorry.'
Eduardo became insistent that they needed to leave, and Lucy allowed herself to be shepherded back down the corridor by his firm hand on her shoulder.
'I hope you find him,' Barros shouted after them.
Lucy stumbled onto the humid street, her mind churning. Two young boys wearing the golden-coloured football shirts of their national team bumped past, screaming in joyful delight, but she barely noticed. She settled into the back seat of the taxi with her forehead furrowed.
'Shall we go to Sugarloaf?' asked Eduardo.
'Yes, I guess so.' Peter looked to his wife for agreement.
'Just bloody drive will you?'
Chapter 28
'I think we need
to be realistic.' Peter Chapman was standing at one end of a cable car with his wife ascending Sugarloaf Mountain with a gaggle of excited tourists who were drinking in the stunning panorama. 'Hundreds of thousands of people come here every year. What are the chances of someone remembering Nick?'
They were rapidly approaching the top of Urca Hill, the mountain's midway point where they would have to transfer onto a second car to reach the summit.
'Peter, don't start, please.' Lucy was clutching the picture of her brother, absentmindedly flicking the corner of the photo with her thumb.
'What if, by some miracle, someone does remember seeing him? What then?'
'Peter!' Lucy startled herself with the ferocity of her tone. 'You know why I've got to do this.'
'Yes, I do understand, but...'
'But what?'
'I'm worried we're on a wild goose chase. Maybe Nick did come here before he disappeared. So what? So does almost every other tourist visiting Rio. Just look around at the number of people.'
'What else are we supposed to do? We don't have any other leads. I can't sit back and do nothing. But you've never supported me over this have you?'
'I'm here, aren't I?'
'You're here, but you think it's a waste of time.'
'And money,' Peter muttered under his breath.
'Is this what it's all about? Money? My brother's not worth it, is that it?' Lucy raised her voice, ignoring the scowls from the other passengers.
'That's not fair.'
'You and your precious bank balance. It's always money, isn't it?'
'Well, there's not going to be much of it left the way we're going through it.'
'What do you mean?'
The cable car slowed to a halt and the tinted glass doors slid open. Lucy and Peter filed out onto a viewing terrace with scenic views of the city and its beaches below.
'Come on - what are you trying to say exactly?' said Lucy.
'We're spending a small fortune without achieving very much.'
'I don't know what you mean. We've hardly been here five minutes.'
'Well, our enthusiastic taxi driver has cost me over five hundred quid already.'
