by Chris Ryan
The fox sprinted suddenly away. Sam saw Bland jump. The old man was nervous. He had good reason. Sam remained silent.
The Georgians appeared, wearing coats that were too heavy for the time of year. Beridze’s assistant carried his briefcase, but the ambassador carried nothing other than a pair of leather gloves. They wordlessly approached and joined them under the yellow light, where Beridze’s badger-like hair look almost golden.
‘Give me your phones,’ Sam demanded.
‘Absolutely not,’ Beridze replied.
Sam was in no mood to argue. He grabbed the ambassador by the coat and pushed him up against the car. ‘Give me your fucking phone!’ he repeated.
The startled man plunged his hand into his pocket and pulled out a thin mobile. Sam grabbed it and turned to the assistant. ‘You too,’ he said. The assistant plonked his bags on the ground and quickly relinquished his handset. Once Sam had them both, he bent down and dropped each one through a drain cover in the gutter. ‘Just in case you were thinking of telling anyone where we’re going,’ he told the startled Georgians. ‘Get in the car. Now.’
The two men hurried into the back seat, leaving Sam and Bland alone in the lamplight. They exchanged no words, but the tension between them was drawn on their faces. Sam turned and headed to the driver’s side of the car. He was opening the door when he heard Bland’s voice.
‘Sam.’
‘What?’
‘Keep them alive.’
Sam shot him a look, nodded, then climbed into the car. He started the engine and drove off without even a glance at the two frightened Georgians sitting in the seat behind him, and leaving Gabriel Bland alone in the yellow light of the lamp.
*
Sam drove carefully through the London night, checking his mirrors as often as he looked at the road ahead. The headlamps of every car, unnaturally bright as they flashed across his vision, were beacons: a potential trail. At the Holland Park roundabout he completed four full circuits, checking that no one was following. It wouldn’t drop a skilful trail – there could be a number of cars following, one waiting at each exit for him; but if he was being followed by more than one vehicle it would stretch their resources.
On the Westway he took the fast lane, veering quickly off the road at the Paddington turn-off and slicing his way through residential streets, before turning back onto the Westway and heading further up into town, past Euston and King’s Cross, then up to the heart of North London. Having memorised the location of the safe house back at MI6 HQ, Sam drove almost on autopilot.
‘Where are you taking us?’ Beridze and his assistant had remained silent for the entire journey, just giving Sam ashen-faced glances in the rear-view mirror.
‘Somewhere safe,’ Sam snapped.
Beridze didn’t look convinced. His assistant jabbered something in their own language, but he was cut short by his boss. They continued to drive in silence.
There was more rubbish than there were pedestrians along the Seven Sisters Road. He kept driving. They weren’t far now and he would feel better once there were walls around him.
The safe house was in a side street off the main drag of Tottenham Hale, but Sam didn’t stop nearby. He drove instead into the large car park by the Tube station. As he turned off the engine and the car lights, Beridze spoke again. ‘Where are we?’
‘Shut up.’ Sam looked around for any sign of another car coming to a halt, but there was nothing. He glanced over his shoulder and pointed at Beridze’s assistant. ‘Does he speak English?’
‘Badly,’ Beridze replied.
‘I want you both to get out. When I say “walk”, you walk. When I say “stop”, you stop. Tell him.’
Beridze translated. His assistant gave a nervous nod and the three men got out of the car.
Sam felt naked without a weapon. His skin prickled as he looked around, scanning the area for signs of anything suspicious. Beridze’s assistant held his briefcase close to his chest as he looked anxiously around; both men were peculiarly out of place in these bleak, suburban surroundings. As though they were a long way from home.
‘Walk,’ Sam told them. He pointed back towards the main road. ‘That way.’
The two Georgians shuffled off. Sam took the rear, constantly checking around him. At the main road he made them wait, like an anxious parent, until there really were no cars – a road ‘accident’, he knew, was the easiest way to carry out a hit. When the road was clear he hustled them across.
‘How far?’ the ambassador asked, already out of breath.
‘Keep walking,’ Sam told him.
They arrived at the safe house in a couple of minutes. To look at it, you wouldn’t think it was anything special, just another in a long line of run-down, three-storey terraced houses. The windows were obscured with net curtains and there were no lights on inside. Further down the street there was an unmarked white van. Sam nodded. ‘We’re here,’ he said.
The three men stood in the street. ‘Well?’ Beridze asked, his voice sharp with impatience. ‘What now?’
‘We wait to be let in.’
‘But nobody knows we are here.’
‘Oh, they know,’ Sam replied. And at just that moment the front door clicked open. Sam pushed past the two Georgians, opened the door a little further and peered inside. Darkness. ‘It’s me,’ he called quietly. ‘Sam.’
A pause. And then from the silence emerged a figure. Tall, wide-shouldered, a weapon in his hand and a comms earpiece over one ear. Sam recognised the hook nose and the heavy eyebrows, of course. Steve Davenport. ‘Morning all. Got some packages to deliver, then?’ His voice was flat; immediately Sam picked up on a sense of unease, as if his SAS mate was less than pleased to see him.
‘Special fucking delivery,’ Sam replied. He turned round to the Georgians. ‘All right, you two. Get inside.’
The door was closed and they headed upstairs in near darkness. On the first-floor landing Sam saw a strip of light underneath one of the doors. Davenport opened it and they filed inside.
It was a sparse, unwelcoming room, but then Sam hadn’t been expecting the Ritz. A good safe house needed to be basic and free of furniture – the more stuff there was in it, the harder it would be to tell if the place had been tampered with. There was one window in this room, but it was blocked off by a large sheet of black tarpaulin in order to stop any light escaping from a single bulb that hung from the ceiling. A steel flight case of weapons was propped up against one wall, and sitting cross-legged in a corner, packet of cigarettes in front of him and one in his mouth, was Luke Tyler, Craven’s Cockney friend and the one who had taken his death the worst. He took a deep drag on his cigarette. ‘Welcome to the party,’ he drawled. ‘These the strippers?’
Beridze looked incensed; Sam just ignored it. ‘Where are the others?’
‘Cullen’s upstairs watching the garden. Means he has to stand on the shitter, but he’s got a mouth like a toilet, so he’s probably at home. Webb’s up there watching the front and Andrews is on the ground floor doing the same.’ Tyler took another drag on his cigarette, without taking his eye off Sam. ‘Think he saw the milkman earlier on. Nearly shat himself.’
Beridze looked from one man to the other. Even though English wasn’t his first language he was clearly picking up on the tension in the room. Sam looked down at Tyler. ‘Get to your fucking feet, Luke,’ he said. And when the younger man had done so: ‘You got a problem, spit it out.’
Tyler dropped his cigarette onto the bare floorboards and stubbed it out with his boot. ‘Lot of rumours going around, Sam. Plenty of us want to know what your chat with the spooks after the Kazakhstan job was about.’ He set his jaw and stared at Sam.
The accusation hung in the air.
Tyler deserved to know the truth. They all did. But that meant telling them about Jacob and Sam couldn’t bring himself to do that. He walked over to the weapons stash and, almost absent-mindedly, picked up a Sig. ‘Get the others,’ he said.
‘What do you
mean?’
‘Cullen, Andrews, Webb. Get them.’
‘They’re on stag.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Get them now.’
Tyler shrugged, then disappeared. Two minutes later the others filed silently in, all of them wearing NV goggles up on their foreheads and with comms earpieces on one side of their heads. Only when they were all assembled did Sam speak. ‘Sounds to me like Hereford’s turned into a WI meeting.’ He looked at each of them in turn. Tyler, lairy and aggressive. Webb, a vicious fire in his eyes. Cullen, his lips pursed in an expression of mistrust. Andrews, his black skin glowing despite the early morning chill, his face calm but watchful. And Davenport, older than the others, but no less wary.
‘Craven’s dead,’ Sam continued. ‘You think I know something about it that you don’t. Well you’re wrong. You really think the Firm are going to confide in me?’ He let that thought sink in before he dropped the bombshell. ‘Mac’s dead too.’
The men looked at each other. Someone hissed the word ‘shit’, but Sam didn’t see who it was.
‘Shot,’ he continued. ‘Point blank. Night before last. Mac was my best friend. So while you’re all throwing your toys out of your pram, you might want to give that some thought.’
The men looked a bit less sure of themselves. ‘What’s the craic?’ Cullen asked. ‘What the hell happened to him?’
‘The Firm haven’t told me much. Just that he fell foul of the Russians. Like Craven.’ He pointed at Beridze. ‘And just like our man here will, if the FSB get their way.’ The unit looked towards the Georgian. At the mention of so many deaths, the ambassador had grown a little paler. Sam wondered how much he should tell them – about the missile base and the Iranians. Nothing, he decided. All that meant very little to these guys. Craven and Mac were dead and they wanted to pay someone back for it. Sometimes it paid to keep things simple. And sometimes it paid not to tell the whole truth.
‘They’re sending someone,’ he continued. ‘Tonight, we think.’ He looked them each in the eye. ‘Someone good. I asked for you lot because I knew you’d want this chance.’
A thick silence in the room. The two Georgians shuffled nervously.
‘Who knows we’re here?’ Davenport asked.
‘The Firm,’ Sam replied. ‘No one else.’
Davenport glanced over at the Georgians. ‘Our friends didn’t tell anyone?’
Sam shook his head.
‘Then the chances are we’ve sidestepped the hit, that no one’ll come.’
Sam was about to answer, but Tyler got there first. ‘Unless the same person who tipped off Spetsnaz decides to shoot his mouth off about where we are. That what you’re thinking, Sam?’
Sam didn’t know what he was thinking. Bland’s words kept coming back to him. There’s no mole, Sam. You’re seeing shadows. Jesus, he thought to himself. I probably am. It would make sense for Spetsnaz to have been guarding the FSB’s little secret in Kazakhstan. With a flash of insight he suspected he’d been wrong. But mole or no mole, one thing was sure: if this hit had Jacob’s fingerprints on it, things would be complicated. Very fucking complicated. It was a dark thought, but Sam couldn’t shake it.
‘Someone will come,’ he said, somehow very sure that he was right. One glance at the men and he knew they took him at his word. And one look at the Georgians did the same. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Back to your positions and keep your fucking eyes open. These bastards have already nailed two of ours. Let’s make sure they don’t make it a third, hey?’
Daylight came, and with it the ability to walk around the house without alerting anyone outside to their presence. Sam was glad to leave Beridze and his assistant under Davenport’s protection to check the place out. It ticked all the boxes. Exits at the front and the back in case they needed to leave in a hurry – there was a gate at the bottom of the garden and from behind the net curtains in the top-floor toilet he could see an alleyway winding back round on to the street. All the exits could be clearly surveyed from the watch points where the men stood guard with their sniper rifles pointing directly at the windows. Sam’s pep talk had done the trick – they were alert and watchful. Even Tyler’s previous sarcasm had been replaced by a crisp tension. These men were like loaded weapons, ready to be discharged at any second.
Back in the main room, Beridze was sitting on the bare floor while his assistant propped his abundant backside on his briefcase. ‘I demand that you find me a chair,’ Beridze instructed when Sam walked back in.
‘I’m not a furniture removal man.’
‘I am the Georgian ambassador…’ Beridze flared, but he was interrupted by Sam.
‘If tonight’s festivities don’t go the way we want them to, Beridze, you won’t need a chair. You’ll need a box. Now shut the fuck up and let us get on with our job of keeping you alive.’
Beridze scowled at him, but he fell silent.
10.00 hrs. They ate chocolate and drank sugary Coke from the stores the unit had brought with them – and which Beridze, from the look on his face, found distasteful – and waited. Sam attached his own comms, then continued to wait. Long stretches of silence filled the house, broken only by the occasional cough from one of the guys over the comms and the incessant barking of a dog nearby. Sam knew that the buildings on either side of the safe house would be empty, so whenever the silence was disturbed by some indistinguishable noise, everyone jumped. As morning became afternoon, even Beridze had stopped his brusque comments. Something had changed in him. Tiredness? Or had the fear notched up a level as evening approached?
Sam looked over at the ambassador. It was probably a bit of both.
He crouched opposite the two Georgians, his back leaning against the wall as he turned the Sig round in his fingers. The fear, he realised, was rising in him too. Not fear of a fight. Far from it. But a different kind of fear. He felt there was something on the periphery of his vision. Off to one side. And when he tried to turn his mind to see it, it slipped away again. He closed his eyes and tried to zero in.
‘Something wrong, Sam?’ Davenport asked. Sam opened his eyes to see his colleague checking him out.
He shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said.
But it wasn’t true. The shadow on the edge of his vision was there. He knew he should be able to see it, but he couldn’t.
All the entrances and exits were covered. He had the cream of the crop guarding the Georgians. But despite all that, despite everything, Sam Redman couldn’t help thinking he was missing something.
*
14.20 hrs.
Jamie Spillane wasn’t far away. He paced the streets, the faint nausea of excitement churning inside. He kept one hand in his pocket and, with his fingertips, turned the fifty-pence piece that he was carrying over and over. It was stupid, he knew, but like a kid making sure he had his lunch money, Jamie had been holding on to this coin for the last two days. He liked to know that everything was arranged as it should be.
As he walked, his mind replayed his instructions. 21.00 hrs. Do nothing till then.
How many times had he performed the calculation in his head, just to be sure? 21.00 hrs: that was nine o’clock in the evening. He looked at his watch. Half-past two. The intervening hours seemed like days, an impossible bridge to cross before he could finally complete his operation.
Make sure your face is hidden. Wear a hood, a balaclava, something like that.
‘Roger that,’ Jamie had replied, attempting to sound military.
Make sure you know where you’re going. Work out your route in advance.
Jamie had known his route for days. An anxious father-to-be, plotting the fastest way to the hospital, couldn’t have been more fastidious.
He walked faster. On the other side of the street he heard somebody shout at him: ‘Wanker!’ He ignored it. He didn’t need a kerbside brawl to get his kicks any more. He had something else. Something better.
Looking at his watch again, he saw that it was only two thirty-five. He bit his lip, turned and the
n headed back to his bedsit, where he would wait out the remaining hours. His fingertips continued to roll the fifty-pence piece round in his pocket. Faster and faster. It dug into his skin.
How amazing, he thought to himself, that you can kill a man using just a coin…
18.30 hrs.
It grew dark. Sam visited each of the observation posts. The men had reattached their NV goggles. They were like statues in the gloom and about as talkative as they watched out of their windows.
‘It could happen at any time,’ Sam told each of them. And from each of them he got only a brief nod in return.
Back in the main room, Beridze was pacing. He gave Sam an irritated look as he entered, then muttered something under his breath. His wide-eyed assistant remained crouched on the floor.
Silence in the room. The incessant barking of the dog outside.
And at the edge of Sam’s mind, the shadows that wouldn’t go away.
He tried to concentrate. To remain professional. But his mind wandered, no matter how much he tried to steer it back on course. He thought of his father. At that very moment Max would be lying frail in his bed, perhaps reliving old glories in his head, perhaps rejoicing in the son that had come back to life. Jacob was a real soldier, he heard the old man saying. If it wasn’t for your brother, God knows where you’d have ended up.
‘Movement!’ Hill’s voice on the comms. Sam stood up quickly, pointing his gun towards the door. He sensed Davenport training his M16 at the black tarpaulin that covered the window.
‘What is it?’ Beridze whispered. Sam heard the two men shuffle into a corner. ‘What is it?’
Neither SAS man moved.
A breathless few seconds. And then, over comms: ‘It’s nothing.’
Sam lowered his gun, but only slowly. ‘False alarm,’ he stated. He looked at his watch. 18.56. Beridze spat something in his own language. Sam felt like doing the same. The shadow on the edge of his mind grew darker, but no more distinct.
