Lucy’s expression hardened once again. ‘And that’s it? What, we grant forgiveness and then we let her go?’ She looked away. ‘I can’t do that. There’s a long road from where I am right now to any place where I can give Kara Wei a pass for what she did. Whatever the reasons behind that one-woman battle she was fighting, Kara used us. And that don’t wash off easy.’
Marc slipped the phone back into his pocket. ‘I know where you’re coming from. But I’m holding enough grudges as it is. I don’t want to add another one to the pile.’
‘You want so much for her to be on the side of the angels,’ Lucy said dismissively. ‘And you know why?’ She prodded him. ‘It’s because you want to be right. You were right when you went gunning for a traitor in MI6, and you were right when you found out about the Exile device. And you want to be right about this too, but guess what? You can’t make the call every single time, Dane!’
‘I understand what Kara did!’ He shot back the words, a rush of emotion bringing heat to his reply. ‘I didn’t see it at first, but now I get it. Kara and that guy Lex, they had something precious. And it got torn away from her. That happened to me.’ He tapped his chest. ‘I lost Sam, and I’m going to carry that around with me forever.’ Marc turned away, glaring out of the window. ‘In her place, I would have done the same as Kara. Damn it, I did do the same after Nomad were wiped out!’ If he closed his eyes, he knew he would see the fire and smoke of that terrible day, as clear now as when it happened.
Reflected on the inside of the glass, he saw Lucy watching him. ‘You know what your problem is? You’re looking for someone to save.’ The edge and the anger in her words faded. ‘But Sam Green is gone, Marc, and you can’t bring her back. You have to let that go.’
A dozen different retorts formed and died in his mind, but he held off, forcing himself to look straight at Lucy’s words.
Is she right? Ever since the explosion that had wiped out his team two years ago, Marc had been on the run – either away from hunters or doing the hunting himself. Each time he found himself in harm’s way, the drive to get through it, to resolve the threat, had been inescapable. Is she right about my reasons? Is there a void in me that I’m never going to fill? He had no answer to those questions.
He pushed on, trying to find his way back. ‘If you were Kara, if it was your brother dead back there instead of Wetherby . . .’ Marc began. ‘You wouldn’t have hesitated.’
‘I would have told you.’ Lucy’s reply was soft, almost wounded.
Marc looked back at her. ‘I still trust Kara. Like I trust you. Because that’s all that we have left.’ He came closer, compelled by an impulse to reach out and touch her hand, to make a human connection in the wake of the turmoil. ‘That’s what this bloody game takes from you, Lucy. The secrets, the legends and the buried lies, it eats away at truth like acid. Corrodes it.’
He took a long breath. Could she see? Did she understand? Marc pushed on, regardless. The events of the past few days had brought him closer than ever to death, and even if that storm had passed, he couldn’t deny what remained in its wake.
‘It’s not about trust no one, Lucy. It’s about trust someone. We don’t have that, then nothing we do matters. If there’s no trust, then we’re all . . . hollow things going through the motions.’ He let go of her hand and looked back out at the dark skyline. ‘We’re all ghosts.’
Acknowledgements
I err on the side of drama when I write, but I’ve tried my best to give everything in this novel as authentic a texture as possible; so my thanks go to Dmitri Alperovitch, Pauline Bock, Andy Greenberg, Ciaran Fahey, Vince Houghton, Ben Makuch, James Plafke, Jeremy Scahill, Craig Smith, Kim Zetter, Abandoned Berlin, Arch Daily, Boeri Studio, DR1 Racing, the Drone Racing League, ExtremeTech, the Intercept, the International Spy Museum, Vice, War Is Boring and Wired for the articles, blogs, books and other reference materials I made use of during my writing of Ghost.
Much appreciation is due to my fellow authors Peter J. Evans, Ben Aaronovitch and my friends Michael Clarke, Peter Clarke and Shaun Kennedy, for offering advice, moral support and invaluable input during my work on this novel.
Once more, thanks to everyone at United Agents – especially Robert Kirby and Kate Walsh – and all at Bonnier Zaffre, most notably my hardworking and enthusiastic editor Sophie Orme.
And as always, much love to my mother and father, and my better half, Mandy.
(No drones were harmed during the making of this book.)
A message from James Swallow . . .
If you enjoyed GHOST, you may be interested in joining the JAMES SWALLOW READERS’ CLUB by emailing me at [email protected]
Hello!
Thanks for picking up GHOST, the third instalment in the Marc Dane action thriller series, following on from NOMAD and EXILE. If you’re new to these books, then welcome! And if you’re a returning reader from the previous volumes, welcome back! GHOST was an intense writing experience and I hope I’ve been able to translate that to the printed page . . .
As I’ve often said, my concept for this series was to write modern, tech-savvy action-adventure thrillers with the feel of the high-octane novels I loved from the 80’s and 90’s, but filtered through the lens of a post-Wikileaks world, with an everyman hero facing off against deadly threats. As a character, Marc Dane grew out of a desire I had to invert a standard trope that we see in thrillers – the “bloke in the van”, always on the side-lines while others are in the thick of the action. I wanted to explore what would happen if that character got dragged out of his comfort zone and into the middle of the danger, a hero who isn’t an elite black-ops badass, but instead someone who has to rely on wits, adaptability and resourcefulness in order to win.
After Marc’s journey through the events of NOMAD – his quest to clear his name, a search for vengeance and a race to stop a brutal terror attack – he found himself in dire new circumstances for EXILE, chasing down a rogue nuclear device and a ruthless, unpredictable enemy. In GHOST, he’s now an official part of the Rubicon Group’s covert Special Conditions Division, facing a betrayal inside his own team and the mysterious Madrigal and her mercenary hackers.
But his next mission will be his toughest yet; it begins with the disappearance of a genius bio-scientist, and the emergence of a new and deadly threat. As Marc and the Rubicon team search for the missing scientist, they uncover a conspiracy to launch an insidious “false flag” attack on a major city, as a cadre of ultra-right-wing extremists plan to unleash a deadly virus in Europe, setting off a chain reaction of events that will kill millions and plunge the continent into chaos . . .
If you would like to hear more about my books, you can email me at [email protected] where you can become part of the JAMES SWALLOW READERS’ CLUB. It only takes a few moments to sign up, there’s no catch and no cost. New members will automatically receive an exclusive article from me that features a scene cut from the original draft of NOMAD, the first entry in the Marc Dane series – think of it as a novel version of a “DVD extra” with a bit of author’s commentary!
Bonnier Zaffre will keep your data private and confidential, and it will never be passed on to a third party. We won’t spam you with loads of emails, just get in touch now and again with news about my books, and you’re free to unsubscribe any time you want.
If you would like to get involved in a wider conversation about my books, please do give GHOST a reader review on Amazon, GoodReads, or your preferred digital store – or talk about it on your own blog and social media accounts, with friends, family or reader groups! Sharing your thoughts helps other readers, and I always enjoy hearing about what people experience from my writing.
Thank you once more for your interest in GHOST, and keep an eye out for the next book in the series due in 2019!
All the best,
James
THE EXPLOSIVE BESTSELLER
‘Unputdownable. A must-read’ Wilbur Smith
Read where the journey began for Marc Dane . . .
ONE
The day was coming to an end, but still the heat fell like hammers.
Barcelona shimmered as if it were a mirage, the air lensed by the warmth of the day escaping from the narrow streets, back into the cloudless sky. As he walked, Pasco patted his shoulder with a rolled-up copy of El Periodico, tapping out an aimless rhythm across the top of his sergent’s chevrons. His uniform shirt was sticking to his barrel chest, but he didn’t notice it. Pasco was a son of this city, fourth-generation, and he’d grown up in the Balearic sunshine. His old face attested to that, careworn like good calfskin leather.
He navigated around the knots of tourists and locals without really being aware of it. The uniform did most of the work for him, the pale blue of the Mossos d’Esquadra and the red-banded cap on his head cutting a path through people on the busy street. Now that the sun had dropped below the rooftops, the first wave of revellers were shaking off their siesta and coming out to play. Joining them were pale Germans and paler British, yet to build up a tolerance to the heat and grateful for the cooling atmosphere and the open-air cafes in this part of the old town. Minor criminals – pickpockets and opportunist thieves – would already be among them.
But few would be found near this corner of the Ciutat Vella district, thanks to the imposing, slab-sided shape of the main police station on the Nou de la Rambla. It was a charmless building, all heavy white stone and blue-tinted glass, built with the modernist ethic that had swept over the city in the last few decades.
He crossed the station’s courtyard, passing Enrique going the other way, and the two policemen exchanged nods. Enrique pointed at the newspaper. ‘Hey, Abello. Finish it today?’ He smiled, showing tobacco-stained teeth.
Pasco snapped open the paper with a flourish. It was a little ritual that they shared once a week, when the cryptic crossword was published. He offered it to Enrique to show him that every clue had been filled in, the letters written in a careful hand.
The younger man scowled. Pasco knew the other sergent hadn’t completed the puzzle himself, which meant that Enrique would be required to buy him a packet of the good cigarillos, as their regular competition demanded.
‘You’ve got better all of a sudden?’ Enrique asked, with no little suspicion.
Pasco gave a shrug. ‘The warm air. Makes me smarter.’
Enrique’s scowl deepened. ‘If I catch you cheating, I will fill your desk with cat shit.’ He gave a rueful smile of defeat and walked on.
Pasco snorted. Soon, perhaps in a week or two, after he had made up enough wins to redress the lead Enrique had on him, he would reveal his secret. A birthday gift from his grandson, an electronic gadget that kept all his names and address, birthdates and phone numbers. It was a clever thing, packed with a huge library of words and phrases in different languages, and it had come in useful more than once when Pasco had found himself dealing with foreign tourists. It also had a dictionary in it that was excellent at suggesting whole words when you only had a few letters to go on.
Thinking about the boy made him think about his son, and guilt stirred in his chest. He was supposed to call him yesterday, but after work a few of the men went to the local bar and he had lost the rest of the evening with his colleagues and their rough good humour.
Pasco sighed. His son worried about him now that his mother was with the angels. Papa, a man like you should not be walking the streets, he would say. Policeman is a job for men of my age, not yours. Let them give you a desk.
A desk; the very idea made Pasco’s heart shrink in his chest. He loved this city like it was his own private property, and to see it from behind a desk, day in and day out . . . His son didn’t understand that it would be a slow death for him, slow and hard, like the cancer that had taken his beautiful Rosa.
Through the glass doors into the precinct hall, a steady mutter of conversation and office noise washed over him. Stepping through the arches of the metal detectors, he nodded absently to the man on duty there as the scanner bleated. The other police officer waved him through with a distracted nod.
Pasco doffed his cap and he tried to push his thoughts of family aside. There were bigger problems for Pasco to deal with. Sometimes, his son seemed like he had come from another planet, with all his talk of things like the global warming that made the summer heat murderous, the scandals of the impossibly rich, and the men of other countries who seemed to kill each other for reasons Pasco couldn’t begin to fathom.
He sighed. It was because of those things that he didn’t buy the paper for the news anymore. All too depressing. It was just the crossword now, and nothing else.
Pasco noticed the boy then, and chided himself for being too deep in his own head. It was no reason not to remain observant.
The youth was in his late teens, but the pallor of his face made it difficult to be certain exactly how old he was. He had a heavy brow and dark eyes, filled with worry. The ends of black curls peeked out from under a tan painter’s cap, the rest of him hidden inside a nondescript tracksuit the colour of tilled earth. He walked like his training shoes were too tight for him, stepping awkwardly as he made his way toward the big desk where Tomás the duty officer was growling something at a junior mosso.
The youth became aware of Pasco looking directly at him and flinched as if he had been struck. The sergent got a good look at him then, head on. He was washed out, filmed with sweat, and there was a line of bruising on his neck.
His eyes, though, were what caught Pasco. The teenager’s eyes were so very serious, in that way that only the young were capable of. He saw his son and his grandson in them.
The youth in the tracksuit gave him an owlish blink, as if he was going to say something, and then his legs bent under him. He landed hard on the tiled floor and skidded. People heard the impact, the heavy noise of it echoing in the hall, and they turned to stare.
Pasco was immediately at the teenager’s side, kneeling down to look him over. He looked ill; not like a junkie dragged through withdrawal, but someone afflicted with the sort of bone-deep sickness that ate away at a person. ‘Are you all right, boy?’ asked the sergent. ‘What’s the matter? Do you need a doctor?’
The look Pasco got in return told him that the youth didn’t understand a word of Spanish. Part of his mind – the trained, focused part of him that was pure police – was already evaluating the boy, thinking of him in terms of how he would be logged and reported in the day’s paperwork. ‘Where are you from?’ He asked the question without thinking about it. The silent youth looked back with his serious eyes.
The sergent cast around and found a familiar face in the yellow and orange of a paramedic’s jacket. ‘Noya!’ He shouted the girl’s name, but she was already on her way to him, the toolbox-shape of an emergency kit in her gloved hand.
Noya was a regular at the precinct. The petite Catalan girl was part of an ambulance crew from the local hospital, and more often than not, when a medical crisis arose at the station, her team was the one that answered the call. Pasco liked her even though a lot of the other men didn’t. She was brisk and severe, but fiercely competent.
‘Help me get him over to a bench,’ she demanded. Between them, they helped the youth stagger to a wooden seat in the waiting area, the paramedic yelling at the people sat upon it to vacate. They scattered and Pasco laid the boy down.
His breathing changed, coming in short gasps like a frightened animal.
The level of noise in the entrance hall dropped as people began to notice what was going on, pausing in the middle of their own little dramas to watch the unfolding of this one. Some were coming closer to get a better look.
Noya snapped her fingers to attract the youth’s attention. ‘Hey. Can you hear me?’
‘I don’t think he understands,’ Pasco told her.
She had her fingers at his neck, checking his pulse. ‘It’s not heat-stroke,’ Noya replied. She reached for the zipper on his tracksuit jacket and the bo
y snatched at it, preventing the paramedic from opening it. A new emotion crept into his eyes; fear. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a dry gasp.
‘I need to open your shirt.’ Noya said sternly. She waggled a stethoscope at him. ‘To listen.’ She was speaking loudly and over-enunciating each word, as if talking to a slow child.
The youth looked past her to Pasco, and again he tried to say something. Licking dry lips, he forced out a word, and the effort seemed to cost him.
The sergent only caught part of it and he leaned in. The boy tried again, and this time Pasco heard the whisper clearly.
‘Shahiden.’
The word meant nothing to him. He frowned.
‘Get back,’ Noya snapped at Pasco. ‘Don’t crowd me.’ She tried to grab the zipper, and again the youth resisted her. She scowled. ‘I don’t have time for this.’ The paramedic pulled an ingot of bright orange plastic from her pocket. A rescue tool, it was typically used for cutting the seatbelts off victims of traffic accidents, but Noya could wield it like a surgeon, and with a single swift motion she hooked it in the tracksuit collar and sliced it open.
Ghost: Page 42
