Execution (A Harry Tate Thriller)

by Adrian Magson

  ‘How much?’ Gorelkin’s sour mood had evaporated, as if fanned away by the promise of positive action, and he was now almost jovial, like an indulgent parent being asked for pocket money by a child.

  ‘It depends how badly – and how quickly – you want to find her.’

  Gorelkin gave a cold smile. ‘Very badly and right now. Good enough?’

  Paulton nodded and took out a mobile phone. ‘That’s what I like to hear.’ He excused himself and walked away, leaving the three Russians staring at each other.

  ‘Can we trust this pompous little shit?’ asked Votrukhin sourly. He was still smarting from being held responsible for not seeing a possible threat from the Jardine woman. And now this Englishman with the all-knowing attitude was making the job look like a walk in the park across the way. ‘Where does he get his expertise and contacts?’

  Gorelkin looked at him. ‘There was a time, Votrukhin, my friend, when that pompous little shit, as you call him, would have been tracking you right now through this city. He would have had a discreet mobile team around you the moment you stepped off the plane and would have known where you went, who you saw, when you scratched your arse and on which side. And you wouldn’t have known they were there. And all that without this –’ he waved a circular finger in the air – ‘fancy camera technology. Paulton used to be an operations director for MI5. And he was very good at what he did.’

  ‘So why is he helping us now?’ asked Serkhov.

  ‘He’s a capitalist at heart; he joined the private sector. I believe it pays better and he gets to choose what he does.’

  ‘So we’re paying him?’ Serkhov looked puzzled by the idea. He was more accustomed to telling people what to do; if they complied, which was nearly always, it was because he had the means and information that left them with little choice. Life was simple that way.

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’ Gorelkin considered the matter for a moment. ‘Let me put it this way: Paulton owes me one or two favours. I helped keep him out of jail once he left his position in MI5, and he performed certain . . . tasks for me in return. Tasks his former masters would almost certainly not approve of. Paulton knows I like bargains to be kept, and his payment for helping us now is that he gets to live a little longer.’ He glanced at Votrukhin as Paulton walked back into the room, slipping his mobile into his pocket. ‘As to your question about whether we can trust him, not in a million years. He’s a traitor born and bred. You should bear that in mind.’

  Paulton sensed, as he returned to the table, that the Russians had been talking about him. It didn’t bother him; he’d have been amazed if they hadn’t. He was, after all, a former enemy, even though he was now helping them out in their dirty hour of need. Suspicions would be natural on both sides. But he was determined that this would be the last time Gorelkin crooked his finger at him like a master summoning a servant. He’d do this one job, but not merely because Gorelkin had demanded it. He had a much broader plan in mind; one which would see him triumph over adversity. He hadn’t yet finalised the full details, but the framework was there.

  Then a great many people would find the tables turned.

  He’d made a call to his contact in the Met, just as he’d told the Russians. It added slightly to the risk of exposure, but his choices were limited if he wanted to make this visit as productive as possible. What Gorelkin and his goons didn’t know was that he’d made a second call, this to a person high up the food chain, a person with the means and position in the intelligence community to assist his return to the UK – and not under a false flag and a silly beard, either.

  That same person had also given him the information he was after: it was indeed former MI6 killer Clare Jardine who had been in King’s College until the other night. Not that he was about to tell the Russians just yet. Better to keep some things back and retain a home advantage. But the information made his next course of action quite simple: find Jardine, turn her over to Gorelkin and his thugs, then set about selling them all as part of his retirement plan to come back home for good.

  It made using his contact in the Met Police even more urgent. It might burn the man if anyone caught him with his hands on the CCTV search button, but that was too bad. He’d have to make it worth his while.

  He was tired of running. Tired of looking over his shoulder. Tired of wondering if Harry Tate – no, knowing – was out there somewhere, waiting to take him down.

  It was time to come in.

  All he needed was a bargaining tool that they simply couldn’t turn down.

  ‘She’s got nowhere to run,’ he announced as he sat down. ‘She’s the product of a care home. She got caught in a gang shooting in Streatham, south London and King’s College was the nearest unit.’

  ‘But she understood Russian,’ Gorelkin muttered. ‘How is that possible for a girl from a care home?’

  Paulton thought quickly. ‘Simple. She was said to be running with a couple of Ukrainians at the time she was shot.’ The lie came easily. It was better than giving them anything they could fasten on and double-check, and was part of the trade-craft he’d learned many years ago: use elements of the truth for real colour, but sprinkled liberally with facts that were difficult or impossible to verify. The delay would give him time to engineer something himself. Part of the bargain for coming in. ‘Even Ukrainians go in for pillow talk, don’t they?’

  ‘Ukrainians.’ Gorelkin looked disappointed and Paulton knew why. In the Russian’s world, family members offered a bargaining tool; a leverage point. But gang members weren’t family and couldn’t be coerced – even assuming they could be tracked down.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Paulton said smoothly, and indicated the two FSB operatives. ‘I have my resources. Your men can start looking and I’ll get things rolling. I should have some answers in a couple of hours. Perhaps I could have a mobile number to contact you?’

  Gorelkin flicked a finger at Votrukhin to give Paulton his number. ‘You can talk to him. He will pass messages to me.’

  Paulton nodded. Gorelkin was being very careful, using his man as a cut-out. It was standard cell procedure. If anyone locked onto Votrukhin, it would end there.

  TWELVE

  ‘Nothing.’ Rik handed Harry a coffee and nodded at the laptop screen, open on his living room table. The air in the room was stuffy and the machine’s fan cooler was whirring busily, pointing to a long period of constant use. In the street outside, traffic noises signalled life in the Paddington area going on as usual.

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘No mention of any prison transfers of females below the age of forty in the last five days. Unless they dropped her into the system without a tag, which I suppose could be possible, she’s not in there. Knowing the way their bureaucratic minds work, they’d have had to provide her with a file, even if they’d given her a cover name. But the bio and physical details would have had to be similar, and I found nothing like a reasonable match.’

  Harry agreed. Even given MI6’s possible involvement, the civil service minds would have demanded some appropriate, if false, paperwork for a prisoner transfer, if only for health and safety reasons. And there was only so much fudging of details possible before somebody noticed and shouted out loud.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘About Tobinskiy, the usual stuff, mostly going back some years.’ Rik pointed at a small stack of A4 sheets on a sideboard next to an inkjet printer. ‘I printed off what was relevant for you, just in case. Since Litvinenko got iced, Tobinskiy’s been keeping a low profile. He published some bits and pieces supporting calls for an investigation into the murder and Putin himself, but always through third parties. I trawled through photos as well, but they were all old, too. If the FSB taught him one thing, it was how to disappear. Until now, anyway.’

  Harry flicked through the papers. Culled from newspapers, Wikipedia and similar sites, most of the material was the usual speculative biographical detail, larded with sinister hints about his former position in the FSB alongsi
de Alexander Litvinenko.

  He was surprised at the uncanny likeness between the two men. Perhaps there was some mileage in the suspicion voiced by Ballatyne that the wrong man had died. Not that it mattered now, anyway. Dead was dead.

  ‘And no mentions of Clare?’

  ‘Zilch. No photos, no tags on social media, no references anywhere. Unless Jardine was a long-term cover name, she stayed way off the net. It would help if we could check the name through Six. They’d know for sure.’

  ‘I’m working on that. But don’t hold your breath.’ For some intelligence officers, using a long-term cover name or ‘legend’ instead of their own name, was to avoid the risk of their profession drawing attention to members of their family. Others used legends when working undercover for very long periods, allowing the false identity to take over completely. It was a risky strategy, however, as there was a danger of the line between the two becoming genuinely blurred and the officer losing sight of what was real.

  He brought Rik up to date on his chat with Ballatyne. It didn’t take long.

  ‘The interesting thing is, Ballatyne’s not a happy man,’ he concluded. ‘Something’s going on back at the office and he’s very jumpy.’

  ‘Bit of internal political back-stabbing going on, probably. Lots of it about. Still, at least we’ve got a job. As long as he pays us, I don’t mind. Where do we start?’

  ‘We already have. Let’s summarise what we know.’ He sat down. It was their way of forcing clarity on a situation by brainstorming the possibilities. They usually had more to go on when tracing people, such as documents, tickets, background details, friends or work colleagues. But with Clare they had none. And unless Ballatyne came up with a name, even the work angle would be a non-starter.

  ‘If Clare bugged out before she’s ready, it’s because she knew it wasn’t safe to stay. Why would that be?’

  ‘She heard something.’

  ‘Right. Let’s assume it was something Tobinskiy said in his delirium. If he was rambling, he could have been dredging up all manner of stuff. It could be something with serious implications for the Russians.’ He stopped. Something that hadn’t occurred to him before needed answering. He took out his mobile and texted a simple question:

  Does Clare spk Russian?

  He pressed send and hoped Ballatyne got back to him soon.

  ‘If Tobinskiy was knocked off,’ Rik said, continuing the train of thought, ‘she might have heard or seen who did it. That would have been enough to scare her off.’

  Harry agreed. But he wasn’t sure if that was the whole answer. Clare didn’t scare. Unlike normal people, she was too messed up to know the meaning of fear. But she was ultra-careful. And boneheaded. It was what had kept her alive so far.

  ‘So where would she go? No money, no easy contacts, what would she do?’

  Rik shrugged. ‘She’d do what she was trained to do: duck out of sight. But then . . . I don’t know. Christ, she’s not exactly firing on all cylinders, is she?’

  Before Harry could answer, his mobile gave a succession of beeps. He looked at the screen and saw there was an incoming message. It was a single word.

  Yes

  He tossed the mobile to Rik, so he could read the message. ‘There’s your answer. She heard and understood what Tobinskiy was shouting. Same if she heard anyone speaking to him.’

  Rik nodded. ‘Enough to drive her onto the street.’ He returned the phone. ‘If she’s gone deep, she might never come up again. What then?’

  ‘Then she’s on her own. She’ll have to rely on her wits – or someone she knows she can trust.’

  Rik gave him a doubtful look. ‘Someone like us, you mean? Could she be that desperate?’

  ‘She might.’ Harry stopped. He looked at the phone, remembering the call he’d received earlier on his way here. He’d assumed it was a misdial. But what if it wasn’t? He went to the log screen to search his missed calls. There was just one. He read out the number and said, ‘Can you trace the subscriber?’ Professional instinct made him wary of calling it back until he knew who was on the other end.

  ‘Sure. Then what?’

  ‘Leg work. We know Clare left King’s trauma unit during the night, but not the precise time or the direction she took. We might be able to narrow the time down using the nursing staff visits, but she was no longer critical, so I doubt she’d have been on a regular watch list.’

  ‘Internal CCTV would nail it,’ Rik suggested. ‘If we can get a look at the drives.’

  ‘That might not happen.’ He explained what Ballatyne had told him. ‘We’ll have to go for private cameras. Can you trawl the neighbourhood for business CCTVs, see if you can get something?’

  ‘Sure. But wouldn’t street cameras be quicker?’

  ‘They will, but Six will have already blocked them. Ballatyne might be able to get something, but I’d like to have our own line of evidence, just in case the footage disappears.’

  Everything about the building housing the Major Trauma Centre looked normal to Harry. After arriving, he’d spent fifteen minutes on foot trawling the area surrounding the hospital for signs of extra security, but had seen nothing so far to indicate that the guard roster had been beefed up. Even so, he approached the complex via the glass-fronted Golden Jubilee building, banking on the bustle of visitors, patients and the collection of ambulances either side of the entrance to give him a degree of cover.

  Before leaving for his search of the neighbourhood, Rik had run a quick check of the hospital website, checking facilities. The complex had its own security team with police backup, and considerable CCTV coverage inside and out, monitored by staff in a central control room. Any person entering and wandering the corridors for too long without any obvious aim would soon attract attention from one of the guards.

  Harry waited for a family group of visitors to make their way up the steps, then joined them, holding the door open for an elderly lady and chatting easily to her about nothing of importance as they entered the foyer. It was enough to get him past a female security guard standing just inside the doors. She was short and sturdy, blank of face. Another ex-military person, he guessed. But not like the guards the other morning.

  A second guard stood by the reception desk. Male, older, he was too busy joking with the receptionist to be scanning the crowd, and Harry peeled off from the old lady and walked away with the confident air of one who knew where he was going.

  He found his way by trial and error to the trauma unit, and paused before approaching the security desk. There was no way of getting past this point without checking in; the set-up throughout the hospital was tight, but especially right here, and since the events of the other night, he expected efforts to have been tightened even more. Worse, if it was the same man he’d seen on duty last time, he was going to recognise him immediately. Even so, he was counting on the through-flow of patients and visitors not to be obstructed by undue procedure, and took a deep breath before stepping in front of the guard.

  It was a new man, fresh-faced and friendly. He decided to go for broke, relying on a strong grain of truth.

  ‘I’m here to interview one of the nurses,’ he said, waving his MI5 card. ‘About the . . . uh, business the other night.’

  The guard nodded, flattered by being assumed to be in on the events of two nights ago, a colleague by implication. He glanced at Harry’s card, eyebrows lifting. ‘Of course, sir. You know where to go?’ He picked up a pen, ready to make a note in his log.

  ‘Thanks.’ Harry held up a hand. ‘I’d rather you didn’t do that, if that’s all right. The fewer names the better with this.’

  ‘Oh, right. Of course.’ The guard looked impressed. Put down the pen.

  Harry walked along the corridor to the nurses’ station, where a young woman he’d seen on his last visit was making notes on a clipboard. Her name badge read Casey. She had red hair and pale skin, like a girl from a Renaissance painting.

  ‘Hello,’ she said brightly. ‘Can I help? Oh.’ Her
face registered recognition. ‘You came to see Clare.’ Then her expression changed. ‘You know she isn’t here, don’t you?’

  Harry nodded. ‘Yes, I know. I heard you’d all been re-assigned.’

  ‘Most, yes. Not me, though; I’ve been away, so they missed me.’ She smiled. ‘Lucky me, eh? Lots of excitement.’

  Harry returned the smile and explained, ‘I’m not here in an official capacity; I’m a colleague. I’m just worried about her.’

  She looked round as the squeak of footsteps approached along the corridor, and her voice dropped. ‘Actually, I’ve been wondering who to talk to. She needs help. You were the only person who ever came to see her. The others were just checking up, although they pretended to be work friends.’ She frowned. ‘I can’t talk here, though.’

  ‘Fine. Where?’

  She glanced at her watch. ‘I’m on a lunch break in twenty minutes. I’ll see you outside in Bessemer Road up from the main entrance.’ She looked past him and smiled brightly as a woman security guard walked by, then added softly with a wry smile, ‘Sorry, but there’s nowhere private in this place. I’m sure they’ve got the place bugged throughout.’

  THIRTEEN

  ‘Are you some kind of spook?’ Casey lit a cigarette and gazed at Harry for a moment. ‘You probably wouldn’t tell me if you were, though, would you?’

  ‘No,’ Harry agreed, ‘I probably wouldn’t. But what makes you assume that?’

  ‘I don’t know, exactly.’ She looked around as they walked side-by-side along the street, the bulk of the hospital building to their right. ‘Something about you, I suppose. And the other men who came to see Clare.’ She stopped. ‘I’ve been doing this long enough to get a feel about people. Not just the patients, but visitors and . . . others. Some have an aura, you know? My dad was in Special Branch. Some of his friends had this air about them, like they had secrets they couldn’t talk about, that the rest of us weren’t in on. Weird.’