Lucas came down the stairs, a black rucksack hanging from his shoulder. He knelt, and delved into the sack, pulling out radio after radio, and tossing one to each of the team.
“Communication, ladies and gentlemen. We’ve finally got the gear un-packed, so now there’s no way one of us should be going off alone without a way of getting in touch. It’s suicide in a place like this. They’re all tuned to channel 2112. If you need help, but can’t speak, just give three sharp blasts of static.” He demonstrated by thumbing down the trans-mitter on his own radio. The lobby filled with the crackles of life. They heard three distinct pulses. “Got it?”
They nodded.
“It’s a bit like bolting the stable door,” Cutter muttered, mangling the truism. He hadn’t turned away from the hotel’s entrance for the last ten minutes, and now he walked to the door and stuck his head outside.
The guards were back, and they stood to either side of the door, cigarillos hanging lazily between their lips, wraiths of smoke drifting up over their faces. They didn’t acknowledge him. Beyond them, the broad plaza was its familiar hive of tourist activity. Cutter strained to see if the watchers had returned, but yesterday’s vantage points were too far away for him to tell for certain.
Someone was sat beneath the fountain, but it could have been anyone. From this distance it was impossible to assign even a gender to the amorphous shape, let alone an identity.
“Professor?” Connor called behind him.
For a moment he didn’t move, savouring the ripples of heat against his face. Its angry warmth reminded him that he was alive.
Chaplin’s driver was parked against the curb; at least he assumed it was Chaplin’s man. He was supposed to accompany them to the reserve. The tinted black windows of the SUV made it impossible to know who was actually driving. He must have got the air conditioning working, Cutter thought to himself. Otherwise he’s broiling in there.
“In a minute, Connor,” he said over his shoulder. He walked up to the car and rapped hard on the window with his knuckles. It rolled down and Fabrice leaned across the passenger seat to peer out at him.
“Yes, Professor?”
Cutter put his hands on the sill and stooped. “Do you have a way of contacting Chaplin?”
Fabrice nodded.
“Good. Call him. I want to talk to him. Now.”
Chaplin’s man opened the glove box and took out an oversized mobile phone. He hit redial and handed it through the window. Cutter took it, and listened to the dial tone cycle. Before the machine could kick in, Alex Chaplin answered:
“Fabrice? I thought I told you not —”
“It’s Nick Cutter.”
“Ah, Professor Cutter.” There was a short pause. “This really isn’t a good time.”
“I don’t care, Chaplin. I want to talk to Jenny. Put her on the phone.”
A moment later Jenny’s voice asked, “Cutter? What’s wrong?”
“Where the hell are you? We’re sitting here waiting for you guys.”
“You were worried about me?” He couldn’t tell if she was teasing, or relieved.
“Of course I was. What’s going on, Jenny?”
“We’ve had a slight change of plan.”
“I think you’d better explain. What happened with Bairstow?”
“He’s with us. We’re taking him directly to the safe house.”
“You’re what?”
He turned his back on the car and walked away a dozen paces. Lowering his voice he asked again, “What the hell’s going on, Jenny?”
“We had to get him out of there, Nick. He wasn’t safe. They were coming to get him — I saw them.”
“Why didn’t you bring him here?”
“There wasn’t time,” Jenny replied. “Besides, we don’t know if there’s anyone we can trust — even on the hospital staff. And if they know why we’re here, they’ll almost certainly be watching you, as well. We couldn’t take that chance. This was the only way.”
“Where are you taking him?”
“The ambassadorial summer house, just as we arranged. He should be safe there until we can get him out of the country.”
“I don’t like this, Jenny.”
“Neither do I.” There was something about her voice. She sounded strained.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. And then for the benefit of Chaplin she added, “We need to get word to Sir Charles, he’ll know what to do. We can’t exactly put Cam on the next charter flight out.”
“I’m coming to get you. Where are you?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But it doesn’t make sense for you to come here, anyhow. We’ve got Stark with us. More than ever we need to make it look like you’re genuinely on a field trip. We can’t change our plans. Get the gang together and head out as planned. I’ll put you on to Chaplin, and you boys can work out the details.”
“Jenny?” He heard the muffled sounds of the phone being handed over and Chaplin saying, “Professor?”
“I’m coming to join you.”
“I’m not sure that would be wise.”
“To hell with wise, I’m coming. Where are you taking them?”
“Take a look around you, Professor. Are you being watched now?”
Cutter squinted toward the rooftop across the plaza, and the bell-tower, but he couldn’t see anyone. The guards beside the door tapped out ash from their skinny smokes, and said something to each other in Spanish. There were at least a hundred people in the plaza. He couldn’t hope to know if one of them was there to watch them.
“I have no idea,” he admitted.
“I could have Fabrice drive you to the safe house, but there’s no guarantee you wouldn’t be followed. It would hardly be a safe house then, would it? Your man Stark is here, surely that’s enough?”
Cutter couldn’t very well dispute the logic, but he wasn’t happy with it. He certainly wasn’t about to leave Jenny to the mercy of this creep while they went out into the wilderness. Forces were at work all around them, that much was obvious, and he still didn’t know the role Chaplin was playing.
“There’s got to be a way for me to reach you. I need to talk to Cameron, and that’s one of my team you’ve got sat beside you. I’m not about to disappear into the rainforest without her.”
“Oh, I quite understand, Professor. Cam’s not fit to travel, that much is obvious, and I imagine it will be some time before he is. That means we need to hide him for a few weeks while he rests up. You can’t very well sit in that hotel room of yours for a month, though. That doesn’t work.
“You need to be seen doing what you came here to do. Otherwise the people who want to assassinate Cam will almost certainly find him, and the easiest way for them to do that is to follow you or another member of your team. I’m not naive enough to think that there were no security cameras at the hospital, either. One of them has to have captured Miss Lewis’ face. Two and two isn’t very difficult to put together from there.”
Cutter let the implications of Chaplin’s words sink in.
The guards appeared to be paying rather more attention to him now than they had been. Connor stood in the hotel doorway. Cutter covered the phone’s mouthpiece.
“Go back inside, Connor.”
The young man did as he was told. Cutter turned his attention back to the phone.
“This is a mess, Chaplin. If Jenny’s face is on one of those films, and they can trace her back to the Home Office, we’re talking a major political stink. This is exactly what we were instructed to avoid. So what do you suggest?”
“We need to destroy any evidence they might have from their surveillance cameras, and make Cam disappear for a while. That’s my job. You need to be seen to be doing yours.”
“Fine. I still need to talk to Cam.”
There was a protracted silence on the other end of the line as Chaplin obviously thought about it.
“I’ll need to talk to Fabrice. We can try and pull a switc
h. But it’s on your head if this goes wrong, Professor. Am I making myself plain?”
“I’ll bring Blaine.”
“I’m not sure that’s necessary. Double the chance of something going wrong.”
“If Jenny’s at risk, I want my men there to look after her.”
And if things get ugly, I’ll make certain I am not on my own, Cutter thought.
Cutter and Blaine clambered into the back of the SUV.
Fabrice was wearing shades that hid his eyes.
“We are going to drive around the town for a while, then I am going to let you out and Mr Chaplin is going to pick you up in a second car. Two of our men will take your place, and we shall continue to drive for a while, then I shall return your replacements to the hotel.”
“Hopefully no one will look too closely,” Andy Blaine said. He was packing a snub-nosed pistol strapped to his ankle, and a long-bladed knife in a sheath beneath his shirt. His most dangerous weapons by far were not concealed, though. He cracked his knuckles and sank back into the soft leather, turning the air-conditioning up in the back of the car. He had a small black rucksack between his feet.
“They can look as closely as they like. They will only see what we want to show them,” the driver said with a broad grin.
The bait and switch was an old espionage manoeuvre. Cutter had seen it pulled off in a dozen poorly made spy-thrillers. That didn’t make it any less efficient. As long as the switch was done subtly, the eye had a way of seeing what it wanted to see. It was the same principle a stage magician worked by. It was all about being seen.
They had lingered outside the lobby, making a show of climbing into Fabrice’s car. They had chosen to wear the brightest, gaudiest clothing that could be found in the hotel gift shop: luridly patterned Hawaiian shirts. Beneath them they wore plain white t-shirts. Once in the car, they took the Hawaiian shirts off, leaving them behind for their body doubles.
Cutter and Blaine each had a baseball cap stuffed into their pockets, along with a pair of utterly unremarkable sunglasses. They’d be out of the car and across the street in five seconds, looking like different men. That was all it would take, five seconds out of prying eyes, and in that time Fabrice would pick up their replacements, then continue the bogus tour.
Fabrice drove slowly around the plaza, going with the flow of traffic, then turned off beside the cathedral. He drove at a steady thirty, not wishing to draw any unwanted attention. Thirty was an anonymous speed; people saw a car pass them, but did not register it — it didn’t stand out in their minds, since it was just a car like any other.
Cutter peered out through the rear window. At first it was difficult to be sure that they were being followed. But after a dozen leisurely turns that took them onto side streets and further and further from the main drag, it became clear. Fabrice didn’t accelerate. Doing so would have made it obvious. He took his mobile phone from the glove compartment and made a brief call, warning the body doubles to be ready to move.
“It’s all an illusion,” Blaine said, beside him. He already had his fingers wrapped around the door handle.
Cutter saw Fabrice nodding.
“A bloody great trick,” the driver said, turning onto a narrow street. Their tail was less than fifty feet back now. Counting stopping time, opening the doors, and reaching the side of the road, that was nowhere near far enough away.
“Don’t worry,” Fabrice said, no doubt reading the doubt in Cutter’s face. “The next turn will bring us onto a main road. There are five sets of traffic lights along it. We will catch one but drive through it. The manoeuvre will buy us all the time we need to make the exchange.”
They had no choice but to trust him.
The SUV hit the third set of lights, driving through just as they changed to red. There was no way that the car behind could follow without causing a collision at the intersection.
Again without the slightest acceleration, Fabrice indicated and turned off the main road onto a smaller side street. As soon as they were out of the line of sight, he pulled over.
Cutter and Blaine scrambled out. They were outside a small café whose seats and tables had tumbled out onto the street. Beside it was a florist. The scent of the flowers, mixed with the caffeinated rush of the café’s own aromas, was intoxicating. Two men got up from their table, drinks untouched, and without a word climbed quickly into the back of the SUV. The doors slammed and the car was on its way again in less than ten seconds.
Cutter pulled on his hat and sat down in one of the recently vacated chairs. Blaine sat down beside him. The coffee was still hot and his pastry had a single bite taken out of it. Cutter drank the warm liquid and waited, counting out the time silently in his head. In less than a minute their tail came around the corner. He did not recognise the driver, nor the passenger, though both appeared to be European. He filed that away in his memory.
The car didn’t slow as it passed. Fabrice would lead them on a merry little chase, giving Cutter and Blaine ample time to walk back through the streets to the arranged meeting place where Alex Chaplin was waiting.
The safe house was anything but safe, in Stark’s eyes.
He came to meet Blaine and Cutter at the gate. He had been laying down precautions, should the worst come to the worst.
The soldier’s gaze swept across the compound, taking in all of its vulnerabilities in a matter of seconds. The art-deco building was removed from the main thoroughfares by a long and winding road that curved up through thick foliage. It looked picturesque, even palatial, but all of those beautiful trees were just more places an intruder could hide. The chain-link fence was the same kind of fence they used to keep kids in school, which meant it could be tugged up from the ground far enough for a slim man to wriggle beneath without too much effort. He saw a number of motion detectors, and tried to overlay their parabolic arcs across the terrain, looking for blind spots. There were three he could see, though depending upon the angle of a fourth sensor there might well have been another.
Moving from one blind spot to the next would prove difficult, but it wasn’t impossible.
“This is the ambassador’s summer residence,” Chaplin explained. “One of the safest buildings in all of Cuzco.”
“And if you believe that, we’re going to get along just fine,” Stark finished for him. Blaine chuckled.
The building was built on two storeys. There were three balconies, one grand one that ran thirty feet along the front of the façade, the other two smaller day balconies aimed at catching the sun as it moved across the sky.
“How many rooms?” Blaine asked.
The question seemed to puzzle Chaplin.
“Eight bedrooms, several day rooms, utilities, study, kitchen and dining room, perhaps fifteen in total, plus a triple garage. Why?”
“The bigger the building, the more difficult it is to keep a determined someone out.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Alarm system?”
“Of course. A dual system. One silent alarm that goes directly to the police house, another that sounds in the British Embassy.”
“Good. Response times?”
“I couldn’t possibly —”
“Pretend you could,” Stark interrupted. “Best guess?”
“Seven minutes, I suppose.”
“That’s a remarkably specific best guess. Good. Points of egress and ingress?”
“The main doors, of course. There’s a door through the servants’ quarters. The patio doors, and there’s a side door through the garage, as well as cellar access.”
“Five points of entry, not counting every window, or any of the second-storey access points.” Blaine turned to Cutter. “The place is a sieve.”
“How many people know you’ve brought the lad here?”
“A few trusted members of my staff,” Chaplin said.
“A few being?”
“Mark Nolan, head of the Embassy Security, ex-SAS; Ed Schubert, the ambassador’s personal secretary; and Niall Maybury
, my number two here. I’d trust all of them with my life.”
“Good, because you are,” Stark said. He counted off fifteen paces to the left, turned on his heel like a duellist and measured off twice as many back. “There’s only the one road in and out, right?” Chaplin nodded. “So we can assume that anyone looking to infiltrate without being seen won’t come down the road. The most logical thing for them to do would be to leave their vehicle back before the turn off, which is what, two miles down the road?” Again Chaplin nodded. “As the crow flies, where’s the turn off? Point it out for me.”
Chaplin took a moment to get his bearings, then pointed down the hill into the trees.
“Are you sure?” Stark pressed.
Chaplin seemed to hesitate a moment then shifted his feet a couple of inches, moving the direction his hand pointed by nearly ten degrees.
“Good. Now take Cutter into the house. We’ll sort out a distant early warning system.”
“What do you intend?”
“Nothing too explosive,” he promised, patting the rucksack. “Just a little something to tilt the balance of surprise back in our favour.”
Cutter followed Chaplin into the safe house. Being out of the oppressive heat was a blessed relief. His white t-shirt clung wetly to every contour of his torso. As soon as they’d entered, Chaplin excused himself.
“A call of nature,” he explained, and he directed Cutter through to the kitchen.
The house was almost cold, so extreme was the shift in temperature. The air-conditioning hummed audibly. There could never be silence in this country. It was either the constant chitter and thrum of cicadas and tree frogs, or the rumble of air-conditioning units battling the heat. In the absence of city noises — cars and the constant yammer of people — Cutter had expected silence, but remoteness brought its own sounds.
He stepped into the kitchen and closed the door behind him.
Jenny sat there nursing a glass of iced water. She looked up at him. He tried to read her eyes, but all he could think was that he was glad she was all right.
Glad.
That was such a vanilla word. It didn’t convey an ounce of feeling to it.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Shadow of the Jaguar Page 12
