‘That’s never going to happen,’ Ballatyne said at last.
‘Why? I’m hardly going to make their names public.’
‘I’m sure you’re not. But under the circumstances, having you galloping around London after members of Six isn’t going to help matters – and I’d never get it sanctioned, anyway.’
Harry breathed easily. In spite of his words, Ballatyne hadn’t made an outright refusal. He’d become used to the MI6 man’s language, and he had a way of showing when he was amenable to persuasion. All it needed was the right kind of pressure.
‘I’m not after the entire department. Just one person.’
Ballatyne looked wary. ‘Christ, please don’t tell me you actually have a name.’
‘No. But it had to be a woman. Someone she worked with and trusted, although not necessarily in the same section.’
‘Why a woman?’
‘Because she doesn’t trust men.’
Ballatyne stood up, a flicker of something on his face which might have been understanding. ‘I have to go. I’ve got a round of meetings to stop this thing going global. I’ll see what I can find out. In the meantime, let’s just hope Jardine doesn’t bump into any of Moscow’s bogey-men.’
NINE
Clare pulled back her waistband and inspected her stomach in the bathroom mirror. With no electricity, she was relying on the pallid light coming through the small frosted window to see. It didn’t help appearances much. Gingerly peeling back the edge of the bandage, she found the skin around the wound looking angry and swollen. It wouldn’t look good on the beach, but she wasn’t planning on going swimming any time soon. It wasn’t itching as much as it had been, although she wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad sign. Good if she was continuing to heal, bad if her body was shutting down around the wound because of infection.
Somehow, though, she felt it was improving. Her core fitness had a lot to do with it, and a resolve to survive, the latter something she had managed to keep a hold on even at her lowest ebb. All she had to do now was take care of the injury.
She put the dressing back in place and listened to the sounds of movement above her head. People were heading out to work, vans and trucks were coming and going, and the intensity of traffic was a faint buzz in the background. It was nine o’clock and another day was well under way.
She decided to wait. She had time and she needed to rest.
After leaving the squat in Pimlico for the first time, she’d scouted the area carefully, looking for somewhere else to stay. Keeping off the streets was essential until she could sort out what to do long-term. Mitzi had given her the addresses of two nearby squats, but she hadn’t liked the feel of the atmosphere. Too many young guys for a start; mostly foreign and far from home, they had the arrogant air of males on the pull. She could do without the inevitable questions or the aggravation, let alone the danger to her wellbeing if things turned rough.
A walk in the area had soon netted her the two things she needed most: ready cash and a mobile phone. Her own mobile had been lost during the shooting. The money was in a Mercedes, several notes tossed carelessly inside the glove box, and the phone had been scored by a simple brush-past of a busy table in a café heaving with lunch-time trade. By the time the phone’s owner realised it was gone, Clare was already halfway down the street, her jacket off and folded under her arm to change her profile.
She was now back in touch if she needed to be, and temporarily solvent. And she had a roof over her head.
The house was a narrow, three-storey building at the end of an alley a stone’s throw from Victoria Station. The basement flat had its own entrance and wasn’t overlooked, with no access points for tenants on the floors above. She’d spotted the wrought-iron gate purely by chance as she’d ducked into the alley to take a breather and check on the money she’d found in the Mercedes. It was the junk mail crammed into the letter box which had caught her attention, a sure-fire sign of an absent or lazy tenant. But she’d had to wait before being able to try the gate. The buildings on either side were dressed with scaffolding and protective sheeting, and builders’ skips were piled high with rubble waiting clearance, reflecting the on-going fashion for re-working the premises by attentive landlords and picky tenants.
On a return trip later that afternoon during a period of low activity, she had found the gate and the door to the basement flat simple to open, thanks to her earlier intensive training by an MI6 locksmith instructor. Inside, the place was dark and musty, the working surfaces and few bits of furniture layered in dust, indicating several months at least since the last occupation. There was a bed, a table in the small kitchenette and an armchair with sagging springs, but it was enough as a temporary base. She’d been in worse while on assignments abroad.
She’d slept the sleep of the dead.
She slumped in the armchair, a mug of coffee cooling by her side, and stared at the phone’s keypad, letting her mind relax. Calling a number regularly meant you relied as much on familiarity with the sequence of keys as you did on memory. Change the keypad layout and you could get thrown completely until the brain switched to the default of recalling the correct number. She had two numbers at the back of her mind: one she had used regularly, the other only recently. The first one was the one she wanted. But try as she might, it simply wouldn’t click into place. It belonged to a colleague and friend in Six named Alice Alanya. Alice had been a constant in her life for a while, closer than friends, yet not partners. Thanks to her, after returning from Red Station in Georgia, Clare had stayed out of the reaches of MI5 and MI6, moving constantly and staying away from her previous haunts. It had been Alice who had kept her secretly fed with information on potential hazards, at great risk to herself and in spite of the huge error of judgement Clare had made earlier which had led to her posting to Georgia in the first place. That same loyalty had led her to remain a friend after Clare had dealt with Sir Anthony Bellingham, the deputy operations director who had tried to have her silenced to protect himself.
The thought jogged another, darker part of her memory, and she felt instinctively in her pocket for the round shape that had become something of a talisman. She took it out and looked at it.
It was a powder compact. Bright pink and plastic, it was gaudy, cheap and repulsive. But she could no more have left it behind in the hospital than have jumped out of the window. She opened the lid. Inside was the application pad and powder in a shade of orange she couldn’t have worn if her life had depended on it. But that wasn’t the point of it.
Rik Ferris had bought it for her, and it had taken her all of two minutes, even in a post-operative haze, to see the irony. The MI5 IT nerd with the irritating haircut and loud T-shirts had sent it after she had lost her own compact, the one with a concealed blade that had saved all their lives. It hadn’t been a friendly gesture by Ferris, she knew that; but it had been one of appreciation.
She turned back to the mobile phone, hoping the distraction might have released the number. It was almost there, but the digits were floating just out of reach like fish in a pool.
She swore softly. The last person she wanted to call was the owner of the second number. Right now, though, she couldn’t see any option. Alice she could trust implicitly. But she couldn’t recall her home address, only that it was somewhere in north London, the details too scrambled to retrieve. The only way to contact her would be face-to-face in the street, close to where she worked.
The MI6 building.
She dismissed that immediately. Stupid idea. If they were watching Alice, they’d have her on camera before she got close and the heavy squad would scoop them both up. Even a brush contact was risky and likely to compromise her friend.
She ran her fingers across the keypad, and found the digits coming clear and fluidly. At last! It started to ring at the other end. Then a man’s voice answered, familiar and steady against a background rush of traffic.
‘Harry Tate.’
She couldn’t speak. Instead she cut t
he connection.
TEN
Harry stared at the small screen as he walked along Piccadilly towards Park Lane. The caller had hung up without speaking. He’d expected it to be Rik Ferris but the number on the screen was unfamiliar. Probably a misdial.
It reminded him that Rik was still looking for a way into HM Prison records, and if he became impatient, was likely to start cutting corners and delving into sites and files where he had no business. It was the reason he’d been kicked out of MI5 in the first place: in moments of boredom he’d gained access to files that the security services had wished to remain forgotten. No harm had been done, but, like Harry and Clare, his punishment had been a posting to Red Station and an intended ticket to a quiet oblivion.
He veered into the quieter sanctuary of Green Park and dialled Rik’s number, checking his surroundings. A few tourists were milling about, unfurling maps and sipping drinks, and early walkers and runners were making their way along the paths and across the grass. But nobody was close by.
‘Fong’s Restaurant. We hep yew?’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Exactly what you asked,’ Rik replied, and switched to a Yoda voice. ‘No more it is, no less. Up against a hard place I am.’
‘Cut it out,’ Harry growled, ‘or I’ll confiscate your toys. You haven’t strayed from the brief, have you?’
‘No, I haven’t. HMP only, just like you said. Honestly, between Five, Six and you, it’s like working in a goldfish bowl.’
‘Blame the digital revolution. It’s for your own good, anyway. I’ve got another brief for you.’ He gave him Tobinskiy’s details. ‘Run up everything you can on him, see if he had any friends in London.’
‘Sure. Anyone in particular?’
‘Yes. See if his world ever collided with Clare Jardine’s.’
‘Seriously?’ Rik sounded surprised. ‘Why would it? Anyway, if it had, it wouldn’t be public knowledge, would it? Ergo, nothing on the web.’
‘Maybe. It’s just a thought. Check his name for any images, and look for her face.’ It was a remote stretch, he knew. But stranger things had happened, such as a known face spotted in a crowd where no mention of them had been made in print. ‘I’m on my way to your place. I’ll tell you more when I get there.’ He had a thought and added, ‘You might also run Clare’s name through the mixer and see if you come up with anything . . . friends, school . . . social media contacts.’
‘I did that once before, but no joy. I’ll try again, though, see if anything’s leaked out. Are you saying she’s out in the wind by herself?’
‘If Ballatyne’s telling the truth, yes. She cut and ran.’
‘Jesus. That must hurt.’ Rik spoke with feeling. He’d been shot himself not long ago just a few hundred yards from where Harry was standing, and was well acquainted with the pain of a gunshot wound.
‘Put the kettle on. I’ll see you later.’
ELEVEN
‘So, how do we find this damned woman, can you tell me that?’ Sergei Gorelkin didn’t quite pound the table, but it was clear to the three men with him that he wanted to. Although smartly dressed as always, in a neat grey suit and white shirt, befitting his cover as a foreign businessman in London, to those who knew him Gorelkin was ruffled. ‘We have lost two days already. She could be anywhere in the world!’
He and his companions were seated in the corner of the Park Room in the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane. It was mid-morning and reasonably quiet, but a suitable tip to the service manager had ensured that nobody else would be seated near them, guaranteeing privacy.
And they needed it. Having dealt with Roman Tobinskiy, a relatively simple matter for men with the right skills, they were now faced with a much more urgent one: the disappearance of a patient in a room near Tobinskiy’s, who may have heard everything that had happened and could, if pushed, explode her news onto the world’s stage. That, as Gorelkin had warned them more than once, simply could not happen.
Alongside Gorelkin were Lt Votrukhin, the team leader, and next to him, toying uneasily with a sugar bowl, Sgt Serkhov. Gorelkin’s question, however, was addressed primarily to the fourth man at the table, who seemed unaffected by the senior Russian’s rancid mood.
‘We look in all the right places, Sergei.’ George Henry Paulton looked cheerily back at him and tapped the table, commanding attention. ‘You asked for my help in tracking someone down, and that’s what I’m here for.’ He shifted in his chair and gazed out of the window over the morning traffic in Park Lane, across to the green swathe of Hyde Park. He would have preferred being out there, feeling the springiness of the turf beneath his feet and breathing in the crisp morning air, rather than doing a grunt job of looking for some missing woman. But he had to be here with these three FSB thugs instead. It wasn’t the best start to any day, but he’d had little choice when the phone call had come through. There were some people you didn’t say no to. And Gorelkin, an unwelcome echo from his own past which right now he could not afford to be made public, was one of them.
‘Did you know, gentlemen,’ he continued, ‘that London has one of the highest concentrations of CCTV cameras anywhere in the civilised world?’
‘What of it?’ Gorelkin murmured. ‘You British are paranoid. How does that help us with our problem?’
‘Let me give you an example: I could tell Corporal Serkhov here to walk a mile from here in any direction and, given a couple of hours, I could track him every step of the way. I could tell you what he was wearing, what the traffic was like, if the sun was shining – even when he looked rather too closely at a pretty girl along the way.’
Sergeant Serkhov muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath at the implied demotion, but it wasn’t entirely directed at Paulton. As a long-time FSB operative, he had no love of cameras.
‘We have them in Moscow, too.’ Votrukhin put in, sounding almost defensive. ‘Are you saying you can use them to find this woman? That will take forever!’
‘Not all of them, no. Just a few key locations to show us which direction she took, beginning with the area around the hospital. From there we track her progress, playing leapfrog.’
Serkhov looked puzzled, and Votrukhin explained what it meant.
‘It’s quicker than going through them all. Once we have one sighting, there’s a new piece of body recognition software that takes care of the rest.’ He smiled at their doubting expressions. ‘It acts like a template, picking out any figure with similar characteristics, even in a football crowd.’
‘You sound very sure of yourself,’ said Gorelkin.
‘I am. This is my turf, don’t forget. I can use that to my advantage.’
Serkhov frowned. ‘Turf? What is that?’
‘He means it’s his back garden,’ Votrukhin muttered sourly. ‘He knows it like he knows his home.’
‘Quite right, Fyodor.’ Paulton was indifferent to the lieutenant’s tone. ‘I have a feel for this city. I also know how frightened people think . . . how they react when they’re on the run. I know all the likely places they’d run to.’ He tapped the table again. ‘But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. You still haven’t told me the name of the person you’re looking for.’
Gorelkin gestured at Votrukhin to go ahead, and the lieutenant said, ‘The name on the hospital chart was Jardine. Clare Jardine.’
A few moments went by, and Paulton felt the air contract about his head as the name came whistling back out of the past. But he kept his face carefully blank as his mind raced over the possibilities. A giant coincidence? Or the playful hand of fate?
Jardine – if it was the same one – was just a name; he’d never had the dubious pleasure of meeting its owner. But clearly something these Russian clowns weren’t aware of was that the woman they had mislaid, the same woman who had been in an adjacent room to where the troublesome Tobinskiy had breathed his final breath, could in all likelihood be a former MI6 operative who had killed her own boss with a concealed knife blade. Given half a chance,
she would undoubtedly like to add his name to the list, too, if she ever laid eyes on him. The thought made his bowels twitch.
He also knew that Jardine had helped Harry Tate not so long ago on a job that had very nearly ended with Paulton’s capture. He’d been lucky to escape that by the narrowest margin. Jardine, however, had been shot and very nearly killed by a Bosnian gunman working with Paulton. He hadn’t given a thought afterwards about where she had gone to. Now, it seemed, he had a possible answer. How many Clare Jardines could there be, after all, being treated for gunshot wounds in specialist medical units?
He swore silently while pretending to run the name through his mental database. He could kid himself that if he’d known from the outset who he was being asked to trace, he would have refused to come. But deep down he knew that was a lie. In spite of staying below the radar, Gorelkin had been able to get in touch with him quite easily to make this demand. It would have been simple, had Paulton refused, for the FSB man to have passed on details of his whereabouts to MI5 and MI6, both of which had his name on search-and-detain lists.
In any case, he had to confirm first of all that it was the same woman. Even knowing something deep down wasn’t enough; always check and double-check, a basic rule of intelligence work.
‘Can you do this?’ Gorelkin interrupted his thoughts. The Russian sounded excited. In his senior position in the Division for the Defence of the Constitution, he undoubtedly received a regular flood of information culled from all over the world about new technological advances, much of it aimed at security, surveillance, espionage and law enforcement. He would have heard of this latest digital development, might even have seen it working.
‘I don’t actually have access to it myself,’ Paulton told him smoothly. ‘But I have a contact in the Metropolitan Police who can arrange for a search to be made.’ He rubbed his thumb and fingers together. ‘It would take a small fee, of course, but I’m sure that’s not a problem, is it?’
Execution (A Harry Tate Thriller) Page 5
