Tracers
Page 29
‘First off,’ continued Rik, ‘you clearly didn’t give a monkey’s for the party line. Second, Clare admired you because you made everything look so easy. You knew exactly what you were doing and you had instincts. We all wanted to be able to think like that.’
‘Good for you,’ Harry countered. ‘So?’
‘So why wasn’t I carded?’
Harry stared at him. He’d expected Rik to be annoyed because of the secrecy, of not confiding in him about the card. But not this. ‘Are you kidding me?’
‘I’m just asking.’
‘You just found out why not! You get the authority to carry a gun – big deal. You want a normal life? Forget it. You want to be on edge every time there’s a terrorist incident, waiting for the phone to ring? To be dragged out of the cupboard whenever someone like Ballatyne feels like it because they’ve run out of options? You want to get pushed into the firing line when they don’t have anyone else handy? Ferris is young, unattached and expendable – nobody will miss him if he screws up. Believe me, you really don’t want that. Stick with computers – it’s what you’re good at.’
‘You came out OK.’
‘She didn’t.’ Harry nodded across the grass at Joanne’s body, his throat tight. ‘Neither did you, in case you hadn’t noticed.’ He let that sink in, knowing the shock of the shooting still hadn’t registered fully on the younger man. That would come in the hours and days ahead, when the sudden overload of adrenalin had worked its way out of his system. For now, he was coping, ready to believe a bullet wound was an easy trade-off for what they had gone through. But Harry had seen what Rik hadn’t: the gunshot wounds on Joanne’s body. There were two wounds to her left side, where Harry’s shots had hit home, and one to her right shoulder. Rik’s shot, going high. Shock from a wound and the adrenalin rush would do that: make the body wobble just enough to throw off the best of aims. But seeing the target react and fall would still make it look like you’d got a centre hit.
Rik was thinking he’d got off easy, that he’d taken Joanne down in exchange for a relatively minor wound. The fact was, he really had got off easy: he hadn’t killed Joanne at all – Harry had. It was something he would need to know before very long. Before he dismissed it as something you did, then moved on.
Ballistics would confirm it.
Harry took out his wallet and extracted the card he’d shown Ballatyne. ‘This is what they give us. Allows us to do what we do.’ He dug his thumbnail along one edge and tore off the outer layer, exposing another layer underneath. It bore his photograph and a short paragraph addressed to all law enforcement and military agencies, ending with a signature and a telephone number. His stay-out-of-jail card. He thrust it into Rik’s hand. ‘Here – you want one, take it.’
Rik said nothing, confused by Harry’s response.
‘It didn’t do me any good.’ Harry felt the beginnings of something like relief, now it was out in the open. ‘And in the end it cost too much,’ he finished quietly.
Rik nodded and winced as the movement translated down his shoulder. ‘Shit, that hurts. Look, I’m sorry about . . . Joanne. I know how you felt.’
‘You don’t know anything,’ Harry growled.
‘OK. But hear me out. Didn’t you get a real buzz out of the last few days?’
‘What?’
‘Come on, I know you did. All the rummaging around and secret squirrel stuff . . . you love it. It’s what you were trained for. That’s why you said yes to the card in the first place, isn’t it?’
Harry stopped and glared at his friend, trying to find the words. But they wouldn’t come.
Rik was right: he had felt a buzz. The investigation, the tracking, the questions – all that. But it had nothing to do with the card, the state’s authority allowing him to carry a lethal weapon and use it in extremis. Nor would it ever. Right now, though, he was tired and angry and wanted to get away from this place and sit down with a very strong drink. Maybe if he asked him nicely, Ballatyne would pass the Rafa’i ball to someone else. But even as he thought it, he knew that wouldn’t happen.
He found himself thinking about the days ahead. The headache-inducing drone of the C-130 flight to Baghdad, the hours of boredom followed by the sudden belly-lurching drop to the hot tarmac; the sights and smells, the alien atmosphere, the operational briefings, the smell of military gear, the waiting. The outcome of flying into a hornets’ nest with the reluctant Rafa’i in tow.
The possibility that things might not go as planned.
Yet somehow, perversely, he was looking forward to it and to coming out the other side. To being able to deal with some unfinished business.
That was what it was all about. His problem was, he didn’t trust Ballatyne to keep his word about the photo. Not that it mattered.
‘How long would it take to track down details from a foreign car registration?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’ Rik frowned, distracted by the abstract. ‘It would depend on the country. Some databases are high-tech and easy to access, others are so primitive they’re virtually impossible. A lot of them still use data-card entry methods—’
‘How long?’ If he let him, Rik could go on all day like this.
‘Can you narrow it down to a country?’
‘Not yet.’
‘I’d need to work on it, maybe feed it out to the community. Someone should be able to recognize the format and get back to me. After that, it’d just be a matter of searching. What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Just a thought.’ Harry was remembering the photo Ballatyne had shown him, of Paulton crossing a pavement. It could have been any town, any country. But not a backwoods place – it looked too smart for that. Somewhere modern, with banks and offices and lines of communication. The kind of place a former high-level spook on the run would be attracted to, to visit occasionally to collect funds and bend his ear to the ground for gossip about potential danger. Most of the cars at the kerb were nose to tail and looked sleek and shiny, exuding an air of anonymous prosperity. Except the vehicle nearest the camera: a Mercedes with its registration plate just visible.
It wasn’t much, but he’d memorized the number.
Just in case they got back safely and Ballatyne decided not to keep his word.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you about it over a drink. Then we’ve got work to do.’
Table of Contents
A Selection of Recent Titles by Adrian Magson
Tracers
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter F
orty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine