High Pressure

by Sam Blake

  The account was still dormant; nothing had been opened since Friday morning. Reiss narrowed his eyes. She could easily have been on that bus, but he wouldn’t be safe until he was sure and knew that the USB key had been blown up along with her. Her sister didn’t have it – in her suitcase or her backpack. And he’d have noticed if she’d been carrying it in the pocket of those skin-tight denim shorts. He’d taken particular note of her ass when she’d been in the house.

  He opened the spyware program that he’d installed on Brioni’s phone. If Marissa was planning to vanish, she’d find a way of letting her sister know, he was sure. He checked her texts first. Nothing unusual. She made a very short call to Anna Lockharte earlier this afternoon. He checked the location of her phone. They must have arranged to meet – she was showing up in the Hogarth Hotel. Email next.

  Reiss paused, his hands hovering over the keyboard as he spotted a strange email in her Yahoo account. Now what was that? It didn’t quite look like spam. He opened it. Yahoo would notify her that there had been a login from a new device, but Yahoo would also be very likely to think it was a hacking attempt. He had so many layers of security around his laptop it looked as if it was in Russia.

  Going into the source information in the email, Reiss found the IP address. A moment later he’d found its location.

  Arklow, County Wicklow, Ireland.

  A slow smile curled across his face. Ireland. That was interesting. He did another search. Arklow was an hour from that place in Wexford, where Marissa Hunt had said her father lived. And he just had to go through Marissa’s Google location history to the last time she’d visited home, to find the exact co-ordinates of the house.

  What a stupid bitch.

  Closing his laptop, Reiss went into the bedroom and grabbed his overnight bag. He opened the drawer in the bedside table and leafed through the passports it contained. He just needed to make some changes to his appearance and then he’d get the next flight. The plan had changed.

  Upstairs in her hotel room, Anna threw her jeans and clean underwear into her carry-on bag. She’d booked a flight and Brioni had given her precise instructions on how to find the house. If she got a cab now, she could get a British Airways flight to Dublin from London City Airport. The bus was almost three hours from the airport, which would mean trying to find the house in the dark.

  It would be far more sensible to go to her apartment first – she could get a train down in the morning, and a cab to Brioni’s family home. There was no point in turning up in the middle of the night. She knew what Irish country lanes were like. There was no street lighting, and they twisted and turned as if the locals were deliberately trying to get you lost.

  Brioni had shown her pictures of a single-storey wooden house with a wide veranda. It was poised on the edge of the dunes, surrounded by long marram grass that leaned away from the sea as if combed by the wind. A narrow lane twisted down from the main road, but Brioni had said she always walked across the fields from the main road. Anna couldn’t see herself doing that, but she could get a local taxi and hope to God the driver could find the house.

  Brioni had found the location on Google Maps on Anna’s phone, so it was stored, but Street View hadn’t made it there. Only the locals knew the house existed at all. There wasn’t even a landline phone any more; that had been disconnected when their father had gone to the nursing home.

  Anna didn’t honestly think Marissa would be there. It seemed far too obvious a place to hide out, and it was a long trip, but at least she could check. She’d be back tomorrow evening and, whatever was going on, Anna knew for sure it wasn’t safe for Brioni to be wandering about looking for her sister, or potentially leading whoever her sister was running from, right to her.

  There was every chance Brioni was being watched. Someone had known when she was arriving in Heathrow. Unless Marissa had mentioned it to Steve, who had passed the information on, it was likely Marissa’s phone had been compromised. Which would explain why she’d left it behind. That, and not wanting to betray her location.

  Standing at the end of the bed, Anna double-checked her bag. Her return flight was tomorrow evening, and by then Rob would be on his way. Anna picked up her phone and, finding Mike’s number, typed out a quick message:

  Brioni’s had cryptic email – she thinks MIGHT be from Marissa. Thinks she’s in going home to Wexford. Going to check. Will keep in touch and be back 2moro eve. No need for cavalry, seems v unlikely.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, considering the situation. It would be much easier if the guards could call out to the house, but Anna could imagine Marissa panicking if she saw them. She hadn’t gone to the police here, which seemed significant to Anna – although she couldn’t understand why – and if Marissa ran again, she might not have the courage to contact Brioni a second time. At least she’d be less likely to run from Anna. To prove her identity, Brioni had written a note for Marissa on hotel notepaper.

  Anna hit send on the text and grabbed her bag, taking a last look around her room to make sure she had everything.

  Chapter 49

  Passport control in Dublin airport was busy when Anna reached it. Walking down the aircraft steps, she’d realised how much cooler Dublin was than London, was very glad she’d decided to wear her jeans and had brought her wrap with her. A beautiful turquoise cashmere, it had been a present from Rob, was lightweight but incredibly warm and ideal for travelling. Not for the first time in her life, Anna thanked her lucky stars that she had Rob in her life. It was complicated, and would always be complicated, but with the promise of this trip she’d come to realise how much she loved him. Even a little bit of him was better than nothing.

  The passport official smiled her through, and Anna headed out through the baggage hall to the main concourse. She’d fallen asleep almost as soon as they’d taken off, had been in a world of her own as she got off the plane. Now she turned left towards the taxi rank and checked the time on her phone. Mike still hadn’t replied to her text. He probably thought this was as mad as it sounded, but Anna knew Brioni wouldn’t be able to sleep if she thought there was the faintest possibility that her sister was alive and well but – for whatever reason – determined to stay missing.

  Outside the airport Anna hesitated, hitching her bag onto her shoulder. Perhaps Mike was busy and that’s why he hadn’t replied? She could try him again when she got to her apartment. She glanced up to see a car pull up in front of her, a taxi logo on the passenger door. Pulling open the rear door, she climbed inside, buckling the seat belt as she spoke.

  ‘Grand Canal Dock, please.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s where you’re going?’

  Anna looked up sharply, just as the central locking clicked noisily closed.

  She recognised that voice.

  Reiss Chanin took off the baseball cap he was wearing and looked at her over his shoulder, his grin wide, teeth too white.

  ‘I think we might go straight to this place Ballycastle will we?’

  Anna scowled at him from the rear of the car.

  What the hell did he think he was doing?

  She pulled her mobile phone out of her bag.

  ‘Do you honestly think I’m going to let you kidnap me? I mean, really?’

  As she spoke, she depressed the call button and put the phone to her ear, watching him looking at her in the rear-view mirror.

  Nothing. She checked the screen. The little triangle that should have shown a full signal was blank. Anna narrowed her eyes. She’d had the confirmation text to say she was on the Irish Vodafone network when she’d switched her phone off flight mode in the airport. Why wasn’t it working now?

  ‘It’s jammed.’

  She could feel his eyes on her through the rear-view mirror.

  ‘What?’

  She glanced up defiantly as he continued.

  ‘Don’t bother trying. The signal’s jammed, your phone won’t work.’ She scowled at him. ‘Anything else you want to know?’

  A
nna scanned the car, looked into the front. There was no taxi paraphernalia at all.

  Why was she such an idiot?

  He’d hired a car and stuck a decal on the side and she’d got straight into it. After everything she’d been taught by Rob’s people after Paris about avoiding a tail, about being conscious of her own security, she’d arrived in Dublin and – wham. Anna shifted in the seat, furious with herself.

  Had Mike received her text? His answer should have arrived by now if he had.

  Christ, was her damn phone playing up again?

  Why was this happening now?

  Anna looked at the back of Reiss’s head, his baseball hat in place, covering his blond hair. Would Brioni think to contact Mike if she didn’t get confirmation that Anna had landed safely? Questions swirled in her head as Reiss pulled out of the airport and headed down towards the motorway.

  One thing she was sure of – she needed to buy time, and the best way to do that was to talk. Maybe she could use the time she was stuck here wisely.

  ‘Why, would be a good start.’

  ‘Why what, precisely?’

  ‘Why are you doing this? Why the bombs?’ In the front seat, he laughed as she continued. ‘And how long can you keep up false flag attacks before everyone sees them for what they are – hoaxes designed to incriminate the ethnic immigrant population? I’m sure IS are inclined to jump on and claim credit for every half-assed lunatic who presents a threat, but don’t you think you’re playing with fire?’

  She saw him shrug. ‘Obviously, and that’s exactly why.’ He said it as if she was stupid, as if that was the whole point. ‘Immigrants are a threat to the economy, they’re a threat to decent society. They take white jobs, and bring in criminality and lawlessness.’ He sneered, as if she would never understand. ‘And why did we go for a bus? That’s pretty obvious – the media is doing our job for us. They see the parallels with 7/7 and previous attacks, and encourage right-minded people to act.’

  He said it in his lazy southern drawl that made her feel sick to her stomach. But the problem was, he was right. Brexit had demonstrated that a half of the UK population were essentially imperialist, xenophobic, and right-wing. She’d been so shocked at the result of the vote. Somehow she’d been sure that there were enough sensible people in the UK to see that leaving the EU was going to cost the country dear, that there were always benefits in co-operation.

  Maybe the problem was that the benefits of membership weren’t so obvious in the UK as they were in the rest of Europe. In Ireland, every EU-funded scheme had a huge sign marking the investment, but she’d noticed in England it didn’t seem to be even acknowledged. She’d been through St Pancras station so many times, and there wasn’t a single obvious indication that the Channel Tunnel was co-funded by the EU – and that was just one scheme.

  But it was like the American election all over again; she hadn’t honestly thought that any reasonable person could think that Trump was an individual who could lead a nation. She’d cried down the phone to Rob as the results had come in.

  Anna put her elbow on the rear-window ledge and ran her fingers into her hair. It had been proven that the Brexit vote had been manipulated and influenced by shady individuals, and the US election influenced by the Russians. She thought of the fourteen-word manifesto, of Trump’s wall and the holding pens for migrant children. Was Reiss Chanin somehow connected to an administration that was seeking to control UK politics by flaming the xenophobia that had, unbelievably, become acceptable after the Brexit vote?

  Anna shivered. Politics was her major, and she understood all too well how terrorist groups like the one run by Reiss Chanin could influence people. And that was in the real world; she dreaded to think what menace he was perpetuating online. Finally, she responded.

  ‘So how does Marissa fit into all of this?’

  ‘She doesn’t. She just knows too much, and I think she’s got some very valuable information I need to get back.’ He shook his head, half to himself. ‘I should never have listened to Steve. He thought putting the whole command structure, the details of every active unit, onto a USB would be safer than on the cloud.’

  Anna worked on keeping her face passive. Was this what all this was about? A USB stick?

  His tone told Anna all she needed to know about how stupid he thought the plan had been. And part of her agreed with him. But the cloud wasn’t completely secure either. If it was her, she’d probably have gone for putting it all in a corner of the Dark Web. It was an absolute sewer, but it was unindexed and the probability of that information being found was virtually zero. If you didn’t know where to look and you couldn’t search, you couldn’t find. Anna took a deep breath. Right now, that really wasn’t her problem.

  ‘And what precisely can I do for you, Reiss? How can I help get this information? I’ve no idea where Marissa is. I’ve come to Dublin to check on my niece’s cat.’

  He laughed. ‘Good try. How do you think I know you’re here? I saw that email to Brioni. That line from some book set in Wexford. You’re going to take me to the place she’s hiding out, and you’re going to get that USB stick for me. She’ll trust you.’

  He glanced in the rear-view mirror, looking at her as if she was stupid.

  ‘And then what? You let us go?’

  ‘That depends how fast I can slip away, really, doesn’t it? If you ladies can keep it zipped for long enough, there’s no problem …’

  Anna pursed her lips, keeping quiet, but inside she was screaming like hell. He’d have to kill them both. They were witnesses. If the information on the USB linked him to the White Wolves, then the pair of them giving testimony would be vital to the state’s case in any jurisdiction. Assuming they ever got to court.

  Anna closed her eyes. She needed to do some very fast clear thinking before they arrived at their final destination, or she may not be there to greet Rob when he landed. The pain was like a blade through her heart.

  But Rob would be trying to call her by now. And when he couldn’t get hold of her, he’d get straight on to his tech team, of that she was absolutely sure. The one thing that Reiss Chanin hadn’t taken into account in his grand plan was the balloon that would go up in Washington if there was any suspicious activity surrounding her movements. Reiss might be able to jam the phone signal, but whatever Rob’s team had installed in her phone after Paris was government-grade technology. They’d know something was wrong when her signal vanished, and switch on their own gear.

  Anna sat back as Reiss pulled on to the M50 motorway. She just prayed US intelligence could get to her fast enough.

  Chapter 50

  Brioni had never been very good at doing what she was told.

  Running her hand through her now jet-black hair, she headed out of the brightly lit terminal in Dublin Airport towards the bus stop. A cool breeze funnelled between the terminal building and the car park as she crossed the road, the sky dark. She flipped up the hood of her fleece and pulled the zip to her chin. Anna had been right about her being easy to follow – pink hair was a bit of a signpost all right – but now she looked pure goth. She’d gone with black lipstick and heavy eyeliner to complete the look, the make-up hiding her features.

  Heading past the convenience shop on the lower level of the car park, Brioni pulled her phone out of her pocket. No messages.

  Anna had landed over an hour ago, but there was no sign of a text to say she was here. Brioni bit her lip. Perhaps it had been delayed arriving – Anna had mentioned that sometimes she had problems with texts sent from her Irish mobile to UK mobiles, that they could arrive hours later. It drove her mad, seemed to be utterly random.

  Brioni felt a flutter of anxiety, but that had to be the problem?

  No one knew that Brioni had received the email – and it had been sent from an anonymous account. She’d been careful not to text Anna or to mention Marissa’s name on the phone. She’d been so careful.

  Everything was all right, she was sure. Perhaps Anna had been watching a fil
m on the plane and it had drained the battery? With getting through passport control, she could only be getting to her apartment around now, would need to charge the phone before she could send anything.

  Brioni checked around her again to make sure she wasn’t being followed. Anna had said she’d stay in Dublin tonight and get the train down first thing in the morning – there was no point in her trying to find the house in the dark.

  Which meant Brioni could head down now and get there ahead of her.

  Anna was an absolute darling, possibly one of the most genuine, most generous people she had ever met, but Brioni wasn’t good at waiting or letting people do things she should do. The sense of inactivity – of stasis – that was making her feel so useless and awful, had just got too much. Crucially, too, Mar didn’t know Anna. It was only after she’d left that Brioni had realised that Anna’s mid-Atlantic accent might spook Mar totally. How could Mar know for sure that Anna was a friend – even with the note Brioni had given her? She was an American, like Steve. Like Reiss Chanin.

  As Brioni headed across the road, a white coach, with distinctive red stripes drew up at the stop. She ran the last few yards and jumped on as the doors opened. Grinning to the driver, she flashed her Leap card on the ticket terminal and sat down at the front.

  She’d kept the green Leap card with her on her travels. On the rare occasions she’d booked into a low budget hotel it came in handy, slipping into the slot that operated the lights so she could keep her room key in her safety pocket. Accidentally leaving her key in her room and getting locked out wasn’t an option when there was no receptionist or night manager. Settling into the roomy seat, Brioni put her head back and closed her eyes for a moment.

  At last, she was going home.

  And she was going to find Marissa.

  Chapter 51

  Marissa woke suddenly; the sound of a car door closing carried on the night air through her open window. Slipping out of bed, she went into the living room, the polished floorboards cold on her bare feet. This house had been built at the same time as her parents’ house, was a mirror image, but in complete contrast this house was full of colour, the walls hidden with edge-to-edge paintings, candles and little statues on every surface, the floors covered in rainbow rag rugs.