‘She heard us,’ Serkhov replied, his tone subdued. He threw an accusing look at Lieutenant Votrukhin, a reminder that he’d urged the lieutenant that she should be taken care of, and he’d been ignored.
‘Of course she heard you. I presume you spoke in Russian?’
Their silence confirmed it. He nodded. ‘As I thought. Which means she probably understood every word you said. And if this wounded trooper understood you, what does that lead you to conclude?’
‘She would have heard and understood what the target said, too,’ said Votrukhin softly. Both men had received a thorough briefing on arriving in the UK. It had begun with details of the target’s shooting by another member of the centre flown over to deal with Tobinskiy in the coastal town of Brighton in southern England. That operative had since left the country. The decision, they had been informed, had been made at the highest level to activate a second team to finish the job, and Votrukhin and Serkhov had been assigned that task. The reason given for the urgency was that the target had been transferred to a specialist hospital in London, and had been heard raving aloud under the regime of drugs he was under. The conclusion was that the risk of anybody working on the unit comprehending what he was saying was moderate to high.
And clearly somebody had.
‘It’s a big city,’ Serkhov put in. ‘It would help if we knew something about her . . . where she comes from, that kind of stuff. I didn’t even see what she looked like.’
‘I’m dealing with that. You’ll have the information as soon as I can get it.’
‘From the embassy?’
‘No. Not from the embassy.’ Gorelkin paused, then said, ‘This mission is running under chyornyiy rules; you know what that means, but I’ll repeat them in case you’ve forgotten. You are to have no contact with the embassy or any of our residents or other assets. You understand?’ Both men nodded. ‘You pass all requests and operational decisions through me. You need something, I will get it for you, including information, money, papers or equipment. You get caught and we do not know you. I will make all efforts to extricate you, but you know that might not be possible for some time. Understood?’
The two men exchanged a brief look, then nodded. They had heard of chyornyiy or black rules operations before, but had never worked under them.
‘Don’t they have next-of-kin details on the hospital database?’ asked Votrukhin. He wanted to get this business over and done with.
‘No. That unit lists patients’ names only. The British Ministry of Defence placed an embargo on any personal information of wounded military personnel being available in case of targeting by the press or extremists. This woman was listed simply as Clare Jardine. I’ll run it through our database but I don’t expect it to turn up much. I’ll have to get it another way.’
‘How?’ Serkhov queried.
‘I’m not sure,’ Gorelkin admitted, his anger subsiding quickly as he considered the action to be taken. He reached in his pocket and took out a Blackberry. ‘But I think I know of a man who can help us.’
THREE
In a stripped-out three-storey building off Belgrave Road in Pimlico, Clare Jardine came awake in a rush, reaching for the elbow crutch. She bit back on a yelp as her stomach muscles protested. Too quick, instincts overcoming caution. She waited for the pain to recede while assessing what had woken her in the first place, mentally gathering herself for flight.
The noise came again: it was the clatter of a rubbish skip out in the street, followed by a man swearing. She lay back. Normal everyday sounds. No threat. Not yet, anyway.
Above her head the high ceiling showed yellowed mouldings and a tracer work of fine cracks spread throughout the plaster. Bare wiring hung down from the central fitting, plaited and sheathed in fabric instead of the modern plastic coating. She shivered at the chill in the atmosphere. Like the rest of the building, the room was bare, ready for gutting and renovation. Only the two thin mattresses on the bare floorboards showed that anyone was using it, a low-quality squat in a high-society street.
But for now it was salvation. Of a sort.
She allowed the events of the night before to reel through her mind. After dressing hastily in her laundered clothes, and a T-shirt to replace the blouse ruined by the shooting, she had left the trauma centre and lost herself in the darkened streets of Camberwell. She’d headed north on Denmark Hill towards Newington and Southwark. It was an area one of her MI6 instructors had referred to only half-jokingly as bandit country, but going round it would have taken too long. Going south or east was too open; west or north-west would take her too close to Vauxhall Cross and the network of cameras around the building she had once called work: the headquarters of SIS – the Secret Intelligence Service or MI6.
Progress had been slow, keeping one eye open for cameras, the other for obstacles at ground level. Instinct had made her scoop up the discarded aluminium crutch in the stairwell of the hospital, which had helped. Aware that the two men who had entered her room might return and come after her, she’d forced herself to put as much distance between them as possible. But she was still weak after her enforced inactivity, especially in the legs, and bouts of dizziness made the street lights swim in front of her eyes, forcing her to rest up when it got too bad.
Twice she’d spotted the approach of police patrol cars and scurried out of sight just in time, losing herself in the shadows. They looked like standard night-time patrols, but a lone woman might be enough to attract a bored policeman’s curiosity. She had been trained to lie for England, but had no rational explanation for being out by herself, or why she was walking in obvious pain. And with her wallet holding cash, ID and credit cards all locked up in the hospital for safe-keeping, not being able to prove who she was would be a step too far.
A couple of drunks had appeared out of an alleyway near the Elephant and Castle station, buttoning their flies. They had eyed her with eager, if unsteady interest, and she’d hurried on, leaving them behind. But at the next convenient doorway she’d studied the crutch. It was lightweight, made of aluminium, with a plastic grip and a cuff for the arm and a rubber ferrule on the end. She’d ripped off the ferrule and stamped hard on the aluminium tip, squashing it into a sharp edge.
Now it was a weapon. She wouldn’t last long swinging it, but a look at the tip might put off all but the most determined of attackers. The rubber ferrule was no longer a perfect fit, but it would do. An SIS instruction drilled into the class had been a simple one: having a weapon didn’t mean you had to use it. But the value of the increased confidence for a field operative, especially in hostile territory, was immense.
Although she had no easy access to a phone, she had racked her brains for someone to contact. But whatever the gunshot had done to her stomach had also blitzed her memory bank; she couldn’t recall a single name or number of anybody she knew. At first she had panicked, staring out at the street in dread. What if she never regained her memory? How would she survive?
But she had forced herself to calm down and think logically. It was what she’d been trained to do in moments of high stress. Things weren’t so bad, because she wasn’t totally blank. She’d instinctively remembered the location of the SIS building, and the direction to take for Southwark; and she’d recognised the fact that the two mystery visitors to the unit had been speaking Russian . . . and that one of them had wanted to deal with her, the words uttered with all the emotion of ordering a takeaway.
‘We could save the bother – do it now.’
She shivered at the memory, hating knowing how vulnerable she’d felt right then; acknowledging that there wasn’t a thing she could have done to stop them.
The rest of the journey to the river had been a blank, constantly dodging the most obvious street cameras, other pedestrians, cars and well-lit areas. But she had made it.
And now she was here.
She flinched as the door to her temporary refuge inched open, and lifted the crutch in readiness. A girl’s head popped into view. Orange hair wi
th yellow streaks, face piercings and black lipstick. The body followed, tall and lean. Torn denims and Doc Martens. Her name was . . . Maisy? Mitzi? She couldn’t remember. Only that she had met her near Charing Cross after crossing the river, sipping soup from a paper cup. She had blagged a cup for herself, then a room here for the night.
She relaxed again.
‘Time to go,’ said Mitzi. The German accent was strong with an American inflection. ‘Are you OK?’
Clare nodded and got to her feet, using the crutch to steady herself. ‘I’m good, thanks.’ Although Mitzi hadn’t asked, Clare had hinted at a broken rib from a mugging while dossing in south London. It happened all the time out there. ‘I appreciate the help.’
‘My pleasure. We have decided to move north – to Bayswater. I hear there’s a place just come up with easy access and no work going on.’ She was in the company of three others, friends from university, all squatting wherever they could. It was fun, for them; something to pass a few weeks in the city before heading back home to Berlin or wherever.
But not for Clare. ‘I’ll pass, thanks. Things to do.’ She stretched cautiously, feeling the tug of her stomach muscles and a slight pain where the bullet had gone in. It was better than it had been, but not yet ready for taking on an assault course.
Mitzi nodded. ‘There’s a Starbucks down the street. Pauli is doing the early shift. If we go now, he’ll give us breakfast and coffee.’
Pauli. Mitzi’s sort-of-boyfriend. Skeletal, moustache, studious type.
‘Yes, why not?’ She needed food, anyway. And some thinking time. After eating, she’d find a place to sit and work up a plan.
If only she could come up with a name.
FOUR
To Harry Tate, the Major Trauma Centre at London’s King’s College Hospital in Camberwell looked no different than on previous visits. It was nearly five p.m. on a normal weekday – or, at least, a normal weekday for those not confined here by circumstances outside their control. Yet as he walked through the main entrance, there was a discernible air of unease about the place, as if its pulse was beating a shade faster than normal.
A security guard at the entrance watched him check in at the unit’s main desk, and another nodded as he crossed the floor to the stairs. Both men had the ex-forces look about them, with that born-in-uniform appearance it’s hard to lose. Harry made his way up two floors to where another guard was sitting behind another desk. Also ex-military, this one was younger and looked edgy. He jumped to his feet at the sound of footsteps, straightening his jacket.
Along the corridor, two men in suits were talking in subdued tones. Beyond them was a line of red-and-white chequered tape strung between weighted plastic bollards. The men looked towards Harry then turned and walked away.
He gave the guard the patient’s name and showed his MI5 pass. It was out of date, but he doubted the guard would notice. None of his colleagues had.
The man consulted a list on the table and nodded. ‘I’ll have to ask you to stay inside the tape, sir. And don’t go anywhere but the room you’re visiting.’
‘Fine. What’s going on?’
‘I can’t say, sir. Thank you.’ He handed over a visitor’s badge on a clip, his face carefully blank. ‘If you’d return that before you leave?’
Harry walked down the corridor, forced by the tape to stick to the right-hand side. Turned the corner and saw the two men just disappearing into a room on the left down at the end. The tape ended there, secured to a hook in the wall. A bundle of bed linen lay crumpled on the floor just outside.
As the door closed, he caught a glimpse of another man inside, and heard the rumble of voices followed by the flash of a camera.
He shrugged and stopped outside the room where a former MI6 officer named Clare Jardine was recovering from a wound to the stomach. She’d been shot saving his life, although he doubted that had been her real intention. Even so, he figured he owed her the occasional visit, whether she liked it or not. The last one had been about ten days ago, before setting off on another assignment. She hadn’t been pleased to see him. Prickly by instinct and nature, it was what he’d come to expect of her.
He pushed open the door.
The room was empty.
He walked back out to the nurses’ station. There was nobody in sight save for an Asian man mopping the floor and humming. He continued on to the desk down the corridor.
The guard shook his head. ‘Sorry, sir. I don’t have anything to do with patient movements. Maybe she’s been discharged.’
‘She couldn’t have been; she’s not well enough.’
‘Like I said, sir, I wouldn’t know. You’ll have to check downstairs in Admin.’
Harry looked back down the corridor, at the tape strung between the bollards. ‘She wasn’t caught up with what’s going on here, was she? Those men and the tape . . . something happened. Was she part of it?’
‘I can’t say, sir.’ He held out his hand for the visitor’s badge.
But Harry hadn’t finished. He turned and walked back towards Clare’s room.
‘Sir?’ The guard’s voice echoed after him. ‘Can you come back, please?’
Harry ignored him. Pushed open the door and stepped inside, closing it behind him. If the guard got really excited, he had only a few seconds before help came.
The bed had been stripped, leaving no sign that it had been occupied recently. Neither was there any of the usual monitoring equipment that seemed to be in every room here, and which he’d seen on previous visits.
He crossed quickly to the bed and checked under the mattress. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find, but he was being driven by instinct. Something had taken Clare Jardine out of this room, he was certain of it; what it was he had no idea. But part of his former job with MI5 had involved tracing missing persons. Looking for the smallest clues left behind by their passing was as instinctive as breathing.
Nothing under the bed. He checked the wardrobe, a slim, utilitarian model. Nothing there. The bedside cabinet was open and empty. On his last visit it had contained a plastic powder compact in a shocking shade of pink. It had been an ironic gift from Rik Ferris, his colleague and also a former MI5 officer. It was an acknowledgement of the fact that Clare had used a knife blade concealed inside a metal compact and saved their lives from the Bosnian gunman who had shot her. Clare liked cold steel.
The irony was that she didn’t do pink – and she didn’t do plastic. Neither had she any love or respect for Rik Ferris. It was a chemical thing. In spite of that, she had kept the compact. The fact that it was gone told him that she had left of her own free will.
The door burst open and the security guard came barrelling in. Behind him another man loomed in the corridor, bigger and meaner. Neither looked ready to take no for an answer.
‘I think you’d better leave, sir,’ the first guard said, and held the door open wide. He was breathing heavily. ‘Otherwise we call the police.’
Harry walked past him and out into the corridor, just as the door across the way opened and a head popped out. It was one of the men in suits he’d seen earlier. He eyed Harry, then the guards, assessing details, before retreating inside without speaking.
Harry walked back downstairs, shepherded by the bigger guard, and explained his problem to an admin assistant on the front desk. She tapped her keyboard, checked a couple of screens, then looked at him with an air of studied patience.
‘Well, her name’s on the list. Are you sure you went to the right room?’
‘Yes. I’ve been here three – no, four times. Upstairs, turn the corner, second room from the end on the right.’ He jerked a thumb at the guard. ‘He can tell you.’
He received a doubting look and a shrug in return. ‘Well, I can only go by what it says here. Sorry.’ She turned back to her work.
‘Can I talk to the nurses on duty while she was here? They’ll confirm it.’
The assistant shook her head. ‘That’s not allowed.’
Harry t
ook out his card. ‘In that case, let me speak to your supervisor.’
The assistant took the card, and without looking at it stood up and walked away, her back rigid. She returned moments later with a large man in a smart suit and rimless glasses, checking his watch with a faint scowl of impatience.
‘Mr Randolph’s the unit manager,’ the receptionist announced, and disappeared behind her monitor with a smug smile.
‘Can I help?’ Randolph glanced at the card. ‘Mr Tate.’
‘Did she explain the problem?’
‘Uh, no. What’s your query?’
‘My query,’ Harry replied patiently, taking back his card, ‘is that a patient I’ve been visiting is no longer upstairs in the trauma ward. Jardine C – female.’
‘Really?’ Another scowl, this one at the assistant. He shuffled behind the desk and tapped the keyboard. More taps and huffing, watched by the assistant who yawned and stared balefully at Harry. ‘She was here, you say?’
‘Yes. About ten days ago when I last saw her. The nurses on duty then will remember.’
‘That won’t be any help, I’m afraid.’ Randolph seemed relieved to have found another hurdle to throw in his way. ‘Following a review of resources, most of the staff from two weeks ago have been rotated to other duties.’
‘So that’s it? You lose a patient and can’t tell me anything?’
Randolph stretched his chin out and sniffed. ‘It’s not that simple, sir – and we don’t actually “lose” patients here. I’m sure there’s an explanation. Have you checked the . . . uh, patient’s home address? Maybe she discharged herself.’
‘With a gunshot wound to the stomach?’ Harry’s voice dropped to a dangerous level. ‘Are you serious?’
The guard clamped a heavy hand on Harry’s shoulder. ‘Excuse me, sir.’
Harry turned and looked him in the eye. It was enough to make the man back off.
Execution (A Harry Tate Thriller) Page 2
