Gray Salvation

by Alan McDermott

  Thompson nodded mechanically as she led Jennie to a Land Rover and inspected the wheels.

  ‘How many vehicles do you have here at the moment?’

  ‘Just this and my estate,’ Jennie said.

  Thompson had been looking for side roads and fresh tracks during their brief walk, but she’d seen nothing to suggest that Jennie was being anything other than honest.

  She mentally crossed this farm off her list as she put her hand into her pocket and hit the button to test her ringtone.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, and held the chiming phone to her ear. She pretended to listen for a moment, then turned to Jennie.

  ‘Sorry, but I’ve just been told about another possible infection. I’m going to have to cut and run.’

  She walked quickly back to her car and sped off. The first farm had been a bust; six more remained in the area.

  Andrew was in one of them, she was sure, and time was running out.

  The Spetsnaz veteran with the scarred face picked up the chirping mobile and pressed the green button.

  ‘Da.’

  ‘What’s your situation?’ Bessonov asked.

  ‘He’s packed up and ready to go. We’ll be at the airport in a couple of hours.’

  ‘Just send the doctor,’ Bessonov said. ‘Tell him Polushin will meet him at the freight terminal.’

  ‘What about the rest of us?’

  ‘The news is reporting roadblocks in your area. There’s no confirmation of what they’re looking for, but we have to assume it’s you. They have no reason to detain an English doctor, but ten Russians are a different matter.’

  ‘We have that covered,’ the soldier said. ‘We sent the vehicles north on the motorway. Once they’re spotted on camera, the police will send everyone to intercept them.’

  He’d instructed two farmhands to get as far from the area as they could and, if spotted by the police, to flee for as long as possible.

  ‘Good. I’ll send someone to monitor the area. As soon as the police leave, get to the airport. We have a charter plane waiting to go.’

  The soldier ended the call and told his men to load the crate into the back of the doctor’s estate car. It took four of them to lift it, the MI5 agent’s body making for a heavy load.

  ‘Now what?’ Vasily asked.

  The leader gave the doctor his instructions and watched him climb into the vehicle and drive off.

  ‘Now we wait,’ he said.

  Sarah Thompson negotiated another tight curve on the narrow country lane and stamped on the brake as she saw a green estate coming the other way. Both cars had to ease onto the grass to crawl past each other, then she hit the accelerator, following the directions for the third farm on the list.

  When the satnav’s electronic voice told her she’d reached her destination, Thompson pulled over and climbed out. Over a hedge, she could see an array of buildings and several head of cattle grazing in a nearby field, oblivious to the spitting rain. A two-storey house sat off to one side, and in front of it sat a minibus.

  She immediately got the feeling something wasn’t right. It wasn’t the kind of vehicle she’d expect to see on a farm, and adrenalin started coursing through her veins as she realised she might have the right place.

  Her first thought was to call for backup, but she hesitated. That would mean pulling one of the police cars off a roadblock, and if she were wrong, she’d be offering Andrew’s abductors a way out of the area. She couldn’t wait for a team to arrive from Thames House, either. There was no telling what they’d do to Andrew when they realised they were surrounded.

  But what could one agent accomplish alone? Torn, she decided to take a closer look and get proof before making the call for backup.

  She prepped her phone once more, then climbed back into the car and took the turning onto yet another dirt road. As she approached the main residence, she saw curtains twitch in the window, and when she pulled up a large man opened the front door of the house and made straight for her car.

  Dan Fletcher stared into the teacup he was grasping tightly and wondered exactly how long the thugs were going to hang around.

  It had been two years since he’d accepted the deal brokered by his brother-in-law from the City, and since then he’d made his payments on time, every month without fail. The twenty grand had been enough to satisfy his creditors and stop them declaring him bankrupt, which meant he got to keep his farm and had enough to tide him over during what had been a lean period.

  The man he’d met seemed decent enough, and his English was very good. Fletcher hadn’t cared that he was Russian, and he hadn’t felt the need to do a background check on his benefactor. Had he done so, he would have steered well clear of him.

  At first, the deal had seemed superb. He got the cash as well as a contract to provide milk for several of Bessonov’s businesses. The price paid was better than the supermarkets were offering, and for the first time in years his business was showing a healthy profit.

  Everything was rosy.

  Until the phone call.

  Why he had to provide temporary accommodation for ten men, he didn’t know, but he guessed they weren’t on holiday. He’d told Bessonov that there simply wasn’t room to house them all, and that was when he’d learned the truth about his benefactor: if he didn’t want to see his farm burn to the ground, he’d house the men.

  The phone on the side table caught his eye yet again. He was tempted to call the police, but what could he say? I accepted a business partner’s request to let ten men into my home. He hadn’t seen anything on the news about a band of marauding Russians terrorising the country, but as soon as they showed up at the house he knew they weren’t boy scouts. Still, what was he to do? Test Bessonov’s threat?

  The leader had treated him like a servant from the moment they met, ordering him to make tea for everyone and then get out of their way. His scarred face was terrifying enough, but when he’d produced an automatic weapon to emphasise his point, Fletcher decided it was a role he would happily play, if only temporarily.

  They’d been in the kitchen for hours now, allowing him in only to refill his cup and make them something to eat, and their presence would have been fine if they’d let him carry on as normal. His cattle needed to be milked, but the scarred one had pulled his sons off that duty and sent them up to Scotland in the Russians’ SUVs. His guest had made it clear that the police would be looking for the vehicles, but they were to lead them on a merry chase as long as they could. Otherwise: ‘If police come and I still here, boom, father dead.’

  With Scarface’s threat ringing in their ears, the boys had hugged their father and set off, the younger one with tears in his eyes. That had been hours earlier, and Fletcher was still trying to think of a way to explain his part in it without mentioning Bessonov’s name. Well, officer, these ten men just turned up, asked my sons to go on a two-hundred-mile joy ride and I thought nothing of it. He knew it wouldn’t fly, but if he revealed the truth, he could kiss his livelihood goodbye.

  He almost dropped the cup when the scarred man poked his head inside the room and barked a single word.

  ‘Come.’

  Fletcher got to his feet and followed the man into the kitchen. ‘What is it?’

  ‘You expect visitors?’ He led Fletcher to the window and pulled back the corner of the curtain to reveal a Ford easing up the approach road.

  ‘No,’ Fletcher assured him.

  ‘Get rid of them.’

  Fletcher was pushed towards the door, and as he looked back, he saw the man pull the slide back on his automatic.

  ‘You tell them we here, you get first bullet.’

  Fletcher swallowed, despite his mouth being dry as a bone. He took a deep breath, then opened the door and marched out to meet the car. He could see just one person in the vehicle, a rather striking woman with long blonde hair and green eyes set above high cheekbones and a sumptuous mouth. On any other occasion he would have greeted her with a welcoming smile and invited her ins
ide, but he knew the importance of getting her off the property as soon as possible.

  ‘Yes?’ he said brusquely as the woman began to get out of the car.

  ‘Sarah Thomas, DEFRA.’

  Fletcher glanced at the woman’s identity card and felt his heart miss a couple of beats, then race double-time to catch up. Plan A had been to simply tell her to piss off, but that was no longer an option. Instead, he tried his best to smile.

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  Thomas told him about a case of foot-and-mouth disease in the county and asked if she could look around.

  ‘Sure,’ Fletcher said, and gestured towards the milking shed. He hoped to get her as far from the house as possible, but the woman wasn’t in the mood to comply. She stood her ground and looked at the minibus.

  ‘That yours?’ she asked.

  ‘My son’s,’ Fletcher said. ‘He plays for the local football team, and he brings his mates here to train. They do a lot of cross-country work.’

  Now looking towards the house, the woman asked a question that almost made his heart stop.

  ‘Do you mind if I use your toilet?’ Thompson asked.

  She was desperate to get inside the house, to have a look around. There was something about the farmer that didn’t smell right, and it wasn’t the cow shit on the bottom of the man’s wellingtons. When she factored in the fresh tracks leading up to the building, the minibus and the twitching curtains – which were drawn in the middle of the day – she was certain she had the right place.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s backed up,’ the farmer said.

  Was it coincidence, or did he just want to prevent her from looking around inside?

  Thompson had seen enough. She was convinced she had the right place, and decided the time was right to call in backup. She made a note of the minibus’s licence plate, then put her hand in her pocket to activate the phone, looking to make an excuse to back away from the area and let the armed response units do their job. But the phone rang before she had the chance, startling her. She glanced at Fletcher, who was watching her carefully, then dug the phone out and saw Ellis’s name on the screen.

  ‘Please tell me the roadblocks are in place,’ she said quietly as she walked away from the farmer.

  ‘I’ve pulled them back,’ Ellis told her. ‘The SUVs were spotted just north of Wigan on the M6.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘An hour ago.’

  ‘An hour! And we’re just hearing about it now?’

  ‘Greater Manchester Police chose to get their assets in place first. They only contacted us as an afterthought, and a junior analyst who wasn’t aware of the significance took the call. I’ve ordered the chief constable to contact me directly from now on.’

  An hour meant at least another seventy miles, so they would be approaching the Lake District by now. ‘Keep me updated,’ Thompson said as she climbed back into her car, the farmer already forgotten. ‘I’m on my way.’

  Scarface watched the exchange through the tiniest gap in the curtains, his index finger on the trigger guard of the automatic in his hand. The woman seemed to be paying too keen an interest in the house, but he was prepared to deal with her if she made a move towards the door.

  He watched the woman take a phone call and climb back into her car and, once she’d disappeared from view, he opened the door and let the farmer back in.

  ‘Who was it?’ he asked.

  ‘DEFRA. They do inspections now and again.’

  ‘That was quick inspection.’

  The farmer shrugged. ‘She got a call and buggered off.’

  Scarface peeked through the window once more and, satisfied that the woman was gone for good, ordered the nervous farmer to go back and sit in the living room.

  What followed was a tense hour as he waited for Bessonov to call with news of the roadblock. His men were ready to go, but until they knew the roads were clear, they had little choice but to sit it out.

  When the call finally came, he ordered his men into the minibus and called the farmer through to the kitchen.

  ‘Hide this well,’ he said, pointing to the case containing Vasily’s sniper rifle. ‘Someone will collect it soon.’

  The soldier joined the others on the bus and they set off for Heathrow. Once they cleared the area, he would gather the rest of the small arms, put them in plastic bags and dump them in a bin at a service station.

  He felt a little sad that he hadn’t had the opportunity to take part in the assassination, one that would have enabled his team to command a higher price on their next outing. But that was the way things went sometimes.

  Two hours and some heavy traffic later, the minibus pulled into the long-stay car park and he led his men to the departure area. He found the Concord Air charter counter, where they picked up their tickets and made it through security without any issues.

  Within the hour, his team and he were wheels up and on course for Moscow, where they would wait for the next contract to come along.

  Chapter 11

  20 January 2016

  Dan Fletcher sat at the table next to the kitchen window, the open curtains giving him a view down the approach road. The sun had set just before 4.30 p.m., and he’d been staring into the darkness ever since.

  He sipped a cup of tea that had grown tepid as he waited nervously. He expected the police to turn up at any time, and he went over his story once more, just to make sure the answers sounded credible in his own mind.

  A set of headlights finally pierced the darkness, followed by two more sets, and Fletcher got to his feet and headed to the door. He opened it and squinted as the glare assaulted his senses.

  ‘They’re gone!’ he shouted, raising his hands as high as he could. Armed police piled out of the first two vehicles, and Fletcher could see the outline of a woman approaching, her silhouette striding confidently, almost menacingly, towards him.

  When the policemen ordered him to the ground, Fletcher eased himself onto his stomach and stretched out his arms. Two men patted him down and pulled him away from the door as four others crept into the house, their MP5s up and ready.

  Fletcher was taken to a police car and told to sit in the back seat, his legs hanging out the side.

  ‘Where are they?’

  He looked up at the figure leaning over him. It was the woman who’d been at the farm earlier in the day.

  ‘You’re not really DEFRA, are you?’

  ‘Where are they?’ she repeated.

  ‘I told you, they’re gone.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘About two hours ago,’ Fletcher told her. ‘They tied me up and left. I eventually managed to free myself and call the police.’

  The woman eyed him suspiciously. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this when I was here earlier?’

  ‘They threatened to kill me. You too. If you’d gone inside the house, we’d both be dead now.’

  The armed officers emerged from the house and declared it safe. The woman turned and called over the scene commander and told him to get a forensics team in as soon as possible. She then pulled out her phone and brought an image up on the screen.

  ‘Did you see this man among them?’

  Fletcher studied the photo of a man in his forties, smiling as he posed on a beach somewhere. He shrugged. ‘They had someone with them, but he had a bag over his head. I never got to see his face.’

  The woman gazed off into the distance, as if searching for someone. Then she turned back to Fletcher. ‘Tell me everything,’ she said. ‘From the moment they arrived.’

  Fletcher went over his concocted story, telling her that they’d arrived early and surprised him as he answered the door. He and his boys had been having breakfast when the Russians arrived and forced them all into the living room, where he was tied up and the boys ordered north. From that point on he’d been left alone, apart from the time he’d been freed to get her off the property. The rest of the time had been spent in isolation, and after they’d left, it had taken a coup
le of hours to free himself and make the phone call.

  He hoped the woman swallowed the story, and that his nervousness would be put down to his recent ordeal.

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t stay here tonight,’ she said. ‘Forensics will need to go over the place thoroughly. Is there someone you could stay with?’

  Fletcher assured her he could stay at a neighbouring farm, but his main concern was for his sons. ‘What about my boys? Did you find them?’

  ‘They were stopped just south of Carlisle. They didn’t do themselves any favours by failing to stop for the police.’

  Fletcher told her about the scarred man’s threat – that his boys were only fleeing to protect their father. The woman seemed to accept it but got an officer to come over and take his full account of the episode.

  As she walked away, Fletcher had a feeling the man she was looking for was someone special to her, someone very close. Deep down he wanted to tell her that yes, he’d seen the man tied to a chair, and that he’d been taken away a couple of hours before the Russians left. If he did, though, his whole story would unravel, and as much as he wanted her to have her man back, he couldn’t bear the thought of losing his sons.

  Sarah Thompson walked back to her car and called Ellis with an update.

  ‘It looks like they were here, but we missed them by a couple of hours. There was a white minibus parked here earlier. That’s probably how they left.’

  She gave Ellis the licence plate of the vehicle and told her to alert all forces to keep an eye out for it.

  ‘Solomon got some hits on the inbound flights,’ Ellis said. ‘We’ve got six matches on the Interpol database. I’m sending the images to you now.’

  Thompson waited for the pictures to arrive, then went back over to the police car and showed them to the farmer. ‘Recognise any of them?’

  Fletcher slowly scrolled through the mugshots, his head bobbing nervously. ‘This is their leader,’ he said, showing her the scarred face of Anatoly Potemkin. ‘I didn’t really get a good look at the others.’