Licensed to Spy

by Barbara Davies

  “Him.” He stabbed a grimy forefinger at Abdusamad. “The other was not there.”

  She digested this piece of information, then nodded. “Thank you.” Relief spread over his grizzled face.

  Ash turned to Ignacio. “His family will need protection too.”

  Ignacio stubbed out his cigarette. “We will take them all to the mountains. They should be safe there.”

  She spared a sympathetic thought for the villagers who would be playing host to yet more of Ignacio’s waifs and strays.

  “What about my boat?” bleated Aznar suddenly. “My business?”

  Ash curled her lip. “Let me put it this way. Which is more important to you? Your boat or your life?”

  A chastened look crossed his face, and he subsided, muttering.

  “Don’t worry,” she consoled him. “It won’t be for long.” I’ll make damned sure of that.

  WHILE IGNACIO’S CONTACTS in La Palma scoured the island for the truck, without result, Ash used his laptop and Internet connection. In between eating and sleeping she trawled the World Wide Web for possible terrorist targets. But by evening, she was none the wiser.

  She stretched and felt the bones in her shoulders and neck realign with a satisfying click. Why pick the westernmost of the Canary Islands? Before visiting El Hierro, she had hiked up into La Palma’s national park and spent some hours sitting and gazing at the spectacular scenery that was the Caldera de Taburiente. The deep quiet there had soothed her battered psyche. Now, she pictured the island. There’s nothing there except bananas, tobacco, and dormant volcanoes. Oh, and the Herschel telescope—the atmosphere on La Palma had a clarity not found elsewhere in the world. It was possible the astronomers were doing research for the military, she supposed, but unlikely.

  She massaged the bridge of her nose. Maybe there’s a secret installation of some kind. If only I could access the Organisation’s records … With a sigh she conceded defeat. There was nothing else for it. Once more she would have to ask Jemma for help.

  Chapter 12

  “ANYTHING YOU NEED, Señorita Jacobs?”

  Jemma looked up from her sheaf of printouts to find Ramirez regarding her. You could show me how to use your computer to retrieve spy satellite photos, and leave me alone for an hour or two. “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

  He nodded and went back to tinkering with what looked like a surveillance bug.

  She returned her gaze to the transcript of Blade’s Copenhagen mission debriefing. Before an urgent phone call from London called him away, Remington had tasked Jemma with going over it with a fine-tooth comb to find out if Blade had revealed “more than she meant to” about Sam Carney’s death. As she had expected, nothing in it incriminated Blade—but it had been interesting to read the details of the mission.

  It had started out routinely. Someone at the British Embassy in Copenhagen was passing military secrets to the Russians. Blade and her partner had flown out, bugged the embassy, and kept the members of staff under observation. They had whittled down the possible suspects to one: Vice-Consul Brian Jepson. Then they had set a trap.

  At Blade’s instigation, a young Dane, whose mother was British and who had helped the Organisation in the past, contacted Jepson and offered to sell him military hardware schematics. At first Jepson treated the offer with caution, but after two follow-up meetings, he took the bait. A few days later, the Organisation’s Russian mole reported that the schematics—misinformation Blade had requisitioned from London—were now in Russian hands.

  It had seemed cut and dried. Blade and Carney took Jepson into custody and were taking him back to London for interrogation, when somehow the Russians got wind of it. They intercepted the three Britons as they walked along the Vesterbrogade towards the Central Station.

  The first Blade knew of the ambush was an angry zzzzzzp and a searing pain in her right hip. The next few minutes were hectic. As she told the officer debriefing her, “Bullets were flying past us, and shoppers were screaming and ducking for cover.” She and Carney managed to get Jepson into the shelter of a shop doorway.

  Though bleeding from her bullet wound, Blade had taken out two of the Russians—one stationed on the rooftop opposite, another crouching behind a post box further down the Vesterbrogade. Carney, meanwhile, was having trouble keeping an increasingly panicky Jepson subdued and was forced to render him unconscious.

  Based on their assessment of bullet trajectories, Blade and Carney deduced there were at least two more hostiles out there. The Danish police were on their way, so they decided to sit tight and wait for reinforcements. But the Russians changed tactics—they took hostage a young woman loaded down with shopping and demanded an exchange.

  The stark words of the transcript couldn’t convey Blade’s tone as she recounted what happened next. Jemma imagined it though. On the surface, icy control; underneath, anger and grief, and, if Blade’s reaction under the truth drug had been any indication, self-recrimination.

  Carney was in awkward spot—forced to stay with the unconscious Jepson, the shop doorway limiting his field of vision. Ash was better placed. She could see both Russians—the one zigzagging to get a clear shot and the one holding a gun to the terrified hostage’s head. Of the two agents, Ash was the acknowledged better marksman, so Carney had told her to take out the hostage-taker while he dealt with the other gunman. She agreed to do as he asked.

  It was a tricky shot. Her hands were slick with her own blood, and the hostage obscured her target almost completely. Almost—a square centimetre of the Russian’s head was just visible. It was an almost impossible shot … for anyone except Blade.

  Bystanders reported how the man’s head exploded, splattering blood and brains everywhere. (His hostage had screamed and fainted.) But as Ash fired, so did the second Russian, and she turned in time to see Carney crashing into the door behind him, a red stain already spreading across his shirt.

  According to the transcript, Blade couldn’t remember much of what happened next. A bystander said she shot and killed the Russian who had shot Carney, limped over to Jepson and bashed him over the head, and tried vainly to staunch her partner’s chest wound. Three minutes later the Danish police and ambulance arrived, but by then her partner was dead.

  There had been an enquiry, of course. The panel decided that, just as Carney was about to fire, Jepson must have come to and distracted him. It was bad luck, they concluded, then reprimanded Blade for concussing Jepson so severely she had not only dented the barrel of her Browning but also delayed the former Vice Consul’s interrogation by several weeks. The Danish police, however, gave her a commendation for saving the hostage’s life.

  And you haven’t forgiven yourself for not choosing the other target, have you, Blade? Even though it would have cost that civilian her life.

  Ramirez was humming as he fiddled with coloured wires, and Jemma bit back an irritated remark. She needed to use the computer, but what excuse could she make? I’m looking up sensitive information so I can pass it to a traitor?

  Blade’s latest note was burning a hole in her pocket. Unsigned but written in that familiar hand, it had been waiting for her beneath her napkin when she dined at a local restaurant. It raised far more questions than it answered. Blade wanted to know: a) if there were any secret military installations in La Palma, and b) the whereabouts of a truck full of Semtex. Jemma knew how to tackle the first task, but as for the second … Blade had suggested she use spy satellite photos, if any existed. In theory Jemma knew how to obtain them, but in practice … If only she could ask Ramirez—

  He stood up and reached for his jacket. “I have to go out, señorita. There are some parts I need.”

  There is a God!

  “If you require anything while I am gone, my wife—” He gestured towards the office next door, from which came the sound of typing.

  “I’m sure I’ll be fine,” said Jemma, smiling. “But thank you.”

  The moment he was gone, she scuttled to the computer and keyed in her
ID and password. Five minutes later, she had learned that there were no secret military installations in La Palma and the telescope observatory was doing purely scientific research. Okay. Satellite photos next.

  Keeping one eye on the open door and one ear peeled for any change in activity next door, she worked out the GPS coordinates for Santa Cruz de la Palma’s waterfront, then launched a query to see if any spy satellite had been in the vicinity. It took a few nail-biting minutes, but the answer came back in the affirmative—by a fluke, two separate satellites had passed overhead within an hour of one another, bracketing the time specified.

  Excited, Jemma called up the first referenced photo. From space, La Palma looked like a giant Stone Age axe head, its point forming the island’s southernmost tip. She zoomed in on her grid reference: about halfway down its eastern edge, and increasing the magnification brought Santa Cruz’s harbour into view. The level of detail was astonishing. Not only could she see the quay, she could see the boat moored to it, the white pickup truck parked nearby, and the men loading the last of several boxes onto it. The picture was so clear she could even make out the truck’s license plate, or most of it anyway—mud obscured three of the letters.

  Just wait until Blade hears about this.

  Frame by patient frame Jemma advanced the photos, following the progress of the white truck. Unfortunately, the satellite was moving rapidly out of range, and the last frame available showed it turning onto a road leading west. Damn!

  She pulled up a road map of the island. The road was the C-812, which wound up and over La Palma’s central spine—the north-south trending ridge known as the Cumbre Nueva—before heading for Puerto de Tazacorte on the west coast. Wouldn’t it have been simpler to sail straight to Puerto de Tazacorte?

  With a frown, Jemma retrieved the photos from the second satellite, which had come into range an hour later that night. It took her a while to locate the pickup truck again—mainly because it wasn’t where she expected. She had been concentrating on the west coast, but it was still parked up on the Cumbre Nueva, where the C-812 met the hiking trail that followed the line of the ridge south. She zoomed in closer on the trail. Three men were walking along it in single file, carrying what looked like the containers from the truck. They were heading towards the island’s southern spine: the north-south trending Cumbre Vieja. Frame by frame, the men hiked further along the trail until, abruptly, the pictures stopped. The second satellite had moved out of range.

  Hands clasped behind her aching neck, Jemma leaned back and gazed unseeing at the screen. Those containers were heavy. They wouldn’t want to carry them far. Why on earth are they hiding the Semtex on the Cumbre Vieja? It’s virtually inaccessible.

  The typing from next door had stopped, she realised with a start, and had been replaced by a low murmur of conversation. She logged off and scuttled back to her desk. Remington put his head round the door, and Jemma pretended to be engrossed in the transcript once more.

  “Change of plan, Miss Jacobs,” he said without preamble. “There’s a bit of a flap on. I’ve been recalled.”

  She marked her place with a finger and looked up. “Flap?”

  “The Americans have received an ultimatum. Libyan terrorists are threatening to disrupt the US economy if they don’t give in to their demands.”

  “Are they capable of that?” she asked. “Disrupting the economy, I mean.”

  “Who knows? But the group in question doesn’t usually make idle threats.”

  “What are their demands?”

  He counted off the points on his fingers. “US withdrawal from Saudi Arabia. Lifting of sanctions. Unfreezing of Libyan assets. Compensation for American bomb damage. Release of all Libyans held prisoner in the US.”

  Jemma raised her eyebrows. “They don’t want much, do they.”

  He straightened his tie. “They must think they hold all the cards.”

  “So, am I to come with you?”

  “No. You’re to stay here and keep up the search for Blade. Though,” Remington looked thoughtful, “I suppose she could be in the States by now.”

  Should she tell him about the Semtex cache in La Palma? But Blade hadn’t given her permission, and it might endanger her.

  “I’ve got a plane to catch.” Remington headed for the door.

  “It might be just a bluff,” Jemma called after him.

  He looked back at her, his expression grim. “And it might just be that, as we speak, Miss Jacobs, nuclear devices are being planted in major centres of commerce throughout the USA. We can’t take that chance.”

  Chapter 13

  ASH READ JEMMA’S note again and frowned. Cumbre Vieja was Spanish for Old Summit, wasn’t it? It would be so much easier to work out what the terrorists were up to if she had access to the Organisation’s resources. Still, at least this flap meant Remington would be out of the way, making communication between her and Jemma easier.

  As she powered up her laptop and logged onto the Internet, she wondered what the threat to the American economy could be. A bluff, probably. She called up her favourite search engine and typed in Cumbre Vieja. It produced a surprising number of matches. Discarding amateur accounts of hiking holidays and bird-watching trips left her with mostly geological reports.

  Ash clicked on a likely-looking link and blinked at the article that came up. Its first line was certainly attention-grabbing:

  When a slab of rock 35 miles long shears off the rocky western flank of La Palma’s Cumbre Vieja volcano, Americans will have to head inland fast.

  Not if but when? Mental alarm bells clanged, and Ash remembered her conversation with the waiter in El Hierro’s clifftop restaurant. What had he said? “A section of the island collapsed. The result: El Golfo.”

  She read on.

  Because as the slab slides into the ocean, it will set off a huge tidal wave. One that will head unstoppably westwards across the Atlantic, towards the eastern seaboard of North America.

  The waiter had beamed at her, as he said, “The wave, it not stop until it reach the Bahamas, until it reach the USA itself!”

  Pulse speeding up, she continued reading. Though the article had begun in dramatic fashion, it was well researched and full of facts and figures, and eventually it confessed that there was in fact little to worry about at present. A college student had used GPS to monitor the positions of twenty markers planted around the Cumbre Vieja on both sides of the fault line, and it had stopped moving.

  So that’s all right then, thought Ash, running a distracted hand through her hair. Except that it isn’t.

  An alternative scenario was playing out in her head, and it appalled her. The scientists had deemed La Palma’s volcano to be safe for the foreseeable future. From Mother Nature, perhaps. But what if someone—terrorists, say—were to give its western flank a violent nudge?

  AS THE SILHOUETTE that was La Palma grew larger on the horizon, Ash wondered what Jemma was doing. Fielding calls from London, probably. Ash had rung her the moment she understood what the terrorists were up to and told Jemma to notify London HQ and the Canarian authorities immediately. The phone call had almost certainly been traced, but Ash was long gone, so it no longer mattered.

  Getting to Santa Cruz de la Palma by hydrofoil would have taken far too long, so Ignacio had called in a favour from a pilot friend. When Ignacio, Ash, Guido, Conrado, and Vito (who had returned from the village last night and could not be deterred from coming) arrived at Reina Sofia airport, a Piper Malibu Meridian was already fuelled and waiting on the runway. They had scrambled on board the six-seater turboprop, strapped themselves in, and cheered as the pilot took off, leaving startled airport officials still racing across the concrete towards them.

  Ash regarded the sea below them. Several small boats and fishing vessels were heading away from La Palma towards Tenerife. Coincidence, or was the evacuation under way? She checked her watch and grunted in frustration.

  “Something wrong?” asked Ignacio from the seat next to her. “Other
than the obvious.”

  “I have no idea how much time I have … or don’t have,” said Ash.

  Notifying the Canarian authorities had been a tough call, but there had been no choice. It would take time to ferry La Palma’s eighty-thousand inhabitants to safety in La Gomera or Tenerife. Especially since the authorities would have to keep the presence of the Semtex quiet or risk outright panic. It made Ash’s job harder, though. The lack of any local bomb disposal experts meant she would have to deal with the threat herself. But by now there would be a security cordon around the summit, and if, in spite of Jemma’s efforts on her behalf, they still believed Ash was a terrorist … She sighed.

  “When I get my hands on those Libyan scum I will kill them,” muttered Ignacio. He was taking the threat to his countrymen personally.

  “Get in line,” said Ash.

  She wondered whether the Americans were evacuating their eastern seaboard or sitting tight and hoping for the best. After all, it wasn’t as if the CIA had blown the whistle themselves. The intelligence had come from a British agent—one suspected of being rogue into the bargain. But if they ignored it and there was a tsunami … They could say goodbye to Boston, New York, Miami …

  “Five minutes,” called the pilot.

  “Thanks.”

  At least Washington knew what they were dealing with now rather than that vague threat to “disrupt their economy.” They wouldn’t agree to the terrorists’ demands, but they could stall and buy Ash valuable time.

  Suddenly, La Palma’s eastern coastline was rushing towards them, and the volcanic slopes of its southern spine were dead ahead.

  “We’re here,” called the pilot. “But Control is telling me not to land.”

  “Ignore them,” said Ash.

  “Si,” said Ignacio. “Do as Blade says. Take us in.”

  The pilot glanced at them and shrugged. “Okay.”

  The plane banked, beginning its descent towards the Aeropuerto de la Palma.

  A BATTERED MINIBUS, engine idling, was waiting at the end of the runway, as far from the control tower as it could get. As they disembarked and ran towards it, an airport security van headed towards the Piper, lights flashing. Ash hoped the pilot could talk his way out of trouble.