by Rob Sinclair
Feeling somewhat dejected at the prospect that Fleming could be moving further away, Logan got to his feet to begin another fire. If he was stopping, he would need a way of staying warm. And he needed more food too – the fire would be essential for warming through any more moss or other food he could find.
Then, suddenly, something caught Logan’s attention. At first he thought it was an animal sound. A call maybe. He strained his hearing, holding his breath so that the only sound around him was the gentle rustling of foliage in the cold breeze. He heard it again. It was distant and quiet, dispersing in the freezing air. But the sound was unmistakable.
A human voice.
And not just any voice. A deep, growly bass voice.
Fleming.
Chapter 11
London, England
Peter Winter walked up the six front steps of the townhouse and stopped at the entrance as he fished out his keys. The building, in Islington, contained the flat where he and his girlfriend lived. Like many others in the area, it had once been a single home for the well-to-do owners, but many years previously each of the four floors, including the basement, had been split into separate dwellings.
Islington was still a relatively prosperous area with small enclaves of real wealth, but like many parts of London, it was never far away from poverty either. Still, it was a vibrant neighbourhood that had a bustling atmosphere and to Winter it was home.
It was almost nine p.m. and although he hadn’t called home to say he would be late, he guessed his girlfriend wouldn’t have bothered to cook any food for him; his working late was becoming an entrenched habit. Like it or not, his girlfriend seemed to have got used to the idea that he wouldn’t be back until well into the evening each weeknight. He’d tried his best to at least shut himself off from his work at weekends but that too had become harder and harder recently.
The set-up that the young couple had was far from ideal, but Winter guessed it was probably no different to that of many professional couples: lawyers, accountants, doctors and the like. Scratch that, people in just about any walk of life had to work long hours if they ever wanted to get anywhere.
Working hours aside, though, Winter realised his job was hardly comparable to most other professions. For the past few days, he had been trying, to no avail, to figure out why it appeared one of the most experienced – and certainly the most deadly – secret agents the JIA had ever seen had gone rogue and was now working for the enemy. It was a matter of urgency. Of national security. The information Logan knew, if it fell into the wrong hands … no, Winter didn’t want to think about that. He just knew he had to find Carl Logan. And fast.
So far, though, he was at a complete loss.
‘Honey? It’s me,’ Winter shouted as he unlocked the front door and stepped into his flat.
He shut the front door, took off his shoes and walked along the bare oak floorboards toward the kitchen. The lights in the hall were on but the kitchen was dark. As he proceeded further down the corridor, he noticed too that the lounge, bathroom and bedrooms were in darkness.
He took his phone out of his pocket and saw he had two text messages and two missed calls from Claire, his girlfriend, as well as a voicemail.
‘Shit,’ he said.
He put the phone to his ear and listened to the voicemail she’d left him almost two hours ago. He had heard the call at the time but had been in the middle of something and had ignored it, planning to call back soon after. He never had.
Winter moved the phone away from his ear as he heard Claire’s voice blasting down the line.
‘Shit,’ he said again.
It had completely slipped his mind. They were supposed to be going on a night out to celebrate her friend’s birthday. Claire was pissed off, and rightly so. As he looked at the text messages, he could well imagine her temperature rising with each angry word she had typed.
But actually, the more he thought about it, although he knew he was well and truly in the bad books and would have a lot of making up to do, he was pleased he had messed up this time. Spending the night socialising hardly seemed appropriate, given the turmoil he was dealing with. While Claire and her friends were busy having a social drink and gossiping about the latest dumbed-down reality TV series, he’d been dealing with what was potentially a threat to just about every intelligence service the JIA had ever worked with. Plus, he couldn’t stand most of Claire’s friends anyway. They were whiny, self-important brats who had no clue just how insignificant they were.
After grabbing a bottle of beer from the fridge and a giant packet of chilli-flavoured crisps from the cupboard, Winter went to the lounge and sat at the desk. He fired up the computer and logged on to his JIA account. He took a long swig from his beer and enjoyed the taste and the feeling as the chilled liquid slipped down his throat.
He opened up the files he had been busily scanning earlier at the office. The files he had been pulling together on Jay Lindegaard.
Winter’s first real run-in with Lindegaard had come many months ago now, during Logan’s ultimately successful mission to rescue Frank Modena, the American Attorney General, after he had been kidnapped in Paris. That case had come at a time when Logan was still, in all honesty, a bit fucked up from his previous mission, which had seen him captured and tortured by a sadistic terrorist, Youssef Selim.
Lindegaard had been gunning for Logan from the start of the Modena case, wanting him removed not just from that assignment but from the JIA altogether. Winter and Mackie had stuck by their man, albeit reluctantly at times.
During that mission, Winter had been tasked by Mackie with finding dirt on Lindegaard to use against him. In the end, the task hadn’t been hard. Lindegaard had sent some heavies after Logan – used his own CIA assets – following Mackie’s constant refusal to remove Logan from the case. An underhand tactic, but one that was ultimately of little surprise to Mackie and Winter. They operated in a secret and dark world, and Winter knew full well that what you dished out to others was ultimately going to be dished out to you. There really was no such thing as an ally.
Never trust anyone. That was one of the first lessons Mackie had ever hammered into Winter. And yet, despite Mackie’s insistence about that unbreakable rule, Winter had never truly abided by it. Because he’d always trusted Mackie one hundred per cent. You trust someone based on their values, the way they deal with you and carry themselves, and the way they treat other people.
To Winter, trusting was a natural instinct, only broken when there was positive evidence to do so. He’d trusted Mackie from day one. He’d trusted Logan too, despite rarely getting along with him. Or at least he’d trusted Logan to do the right thing by Mackie. And yet look how that had turned out. Logan was now the key suspect in Mackie’s death.
But Lindegaard? Winter had never trusted him. He’d never liked him either.
Logan had, as ever, dealt with Lindegaard’s sucker blow with ease, and Winter and Mackie had used that act of treachery, of desperation, to their advantage – they’d essentially blackmailed Lindegaard to allow them to operate away from his scrutiny and challenge. That had carried on right up until Mackie’s murder. They’d never felt the need to take their knowledge of Lindegaard’s betrayal outside the circle of three men, even though, if they’d wanted to, they could have used it to ruin Lindegaard’s JIA career.
No, dirt like that didn’t come along very often and it was best to keep it under wraps and wait and see just how valuable it might become.
Winter still had the leverage over Lindegaard because of that incident, but he sensed the older man would put up a hell of a fight if Winter ever tried to use it against him again – particularly now that Mackie was no longer on the scene. And so, ever since that day, Winter had kept on top of Lindegaard, looking for anything fresh that he could use against him.
Even before Logan’s recent capture in Russia, his subsequent release and Mackie’s death, Winter had had Lindegaard’s email accounts hacked – his phones too where he could. H
e’d placed bugs in Lindegaard’s London home, though he knew that Lindegaard, as with every JIA staff member, regularly had his house swept for such devices and it was a constant challenge to keep eavesdropping channels active. Despite all of that effort, so far Winter had no new dirt.
He knew the fruitless search was at least in part because Lindegaard had already been spooked once. As cautious a man as he always had been, it seemed Lindegaard was now ultra-cautious. Emails were almost non-existent. He used the mobile phone that had been supplied to him by the JIA only for rudimentary business. He had a second mobile phone, for his CIA business, but Winter had struggled to get any kind of trace on it.
He knew that Lindegaard had also taken to using pay-as-you-go SIMs regularly, for just a few days at a time, a few weeks maximum, in order to further limit the ability of anyone to keep track of his calls. And it seemed Lindegaard never spoke about business in his London apartment, or at the very least he spoke so vaguely that it was impossible to glean anything of interest.
On the face of it, Lindegaard’s secretive behaviours were outwardly suspicious. But then Lindegaard had worked for the CIA for something like thirty years, so being clandestine was second nature to him. The problem for Winter was that Lindegaard’s renewed caution meant he was getting nowhere in finding further collateral, which he was sure he was going to need to survive as a commander at the JIA. Lindegaard had hardly given him a warm reception since Mackie’s untimely demise and it wouldn’t be long before the CIA man was gunning for Winter – he was sure of that.
Winter’s phone chirped on the computer desk, shaking him from his thoughts. He hoped it wasn’t Claire; he really didn’t want to speak to her now. He looked at the caller ID and raised an eyebrow when he realised the call was coming from his office.
‘Yes?’ he answered with just the faintest hint of suspicion.
‘It’s me,’ said Pam, his secretary.
‘I thought I told you to go home?’
‘I know, you did. I was just about to. But you really need to see this.’
Winter’s suspicion quickly switched to intrigue.
‘What is it?’ he said.
Pam was in many respects a traditional secretary. She had worked for Mackie for years, taking care of admin and expenses, managing his diary, doing all of the things that Mackie had believed himself too busy to do. With Mackie gone, Pam was now Winter’s secretary. It was the first time in his career that he’d had someone there to look after him, and so far the relationship had been somewhat awkward. Many of the things that Pam was there to do, Winter was just too used to doing for himself.
But what Winter had quite quickly come to realise was that Pam truly was a traditional secretary. She wasn’t just there to take care of admin; it was abundantly clear to Winter that she had known every facet of Mackie’s working life: his movements, his relationships, his agents, their missions. And she understood the politics of the JIA organisation as well as anyone – probably more so than he did, in fact.
Because of that, for the past few days, rather than have her organise his diary, he’d been picking her brains, using her as a sounding board, finding out what she knew about Mackie and what he needed to know about his new role. It had been a big education for him.
‘I’ve found something that you need to see,’ Pam said. ‘About your good friend.’
Winter could feel his heart thud in his chest. He knew she was referring to Lindegaard.
‘Go on.’
‘Probably best you see for yourself. I’ve saved the file in your server area. You’ll spot which file it is, I’m sure.’
‘Okay, thanks,’ Winter said.
Pam ended the call and Winter immediately began to click through to where Pam had indicated. He wasn’t surprised by her vagueness on the phone. Being discreet was part and parcel of the job. But it did raise his interest all the more that Pam had been so wary not just of telling him what she had found but of saying Lindegaard’s name aloud.
He opened the folder in which he guessed Pam would have saved the document and spotted the file almost straight away because of its unusual name. It was called ‘read then delete’.
Winter felt his heart pound in his chest even harder as he double-clicked on the file icon. He felt like a naughty child doing something his parents had forbidden.
The file opened on his screen and he scanned the text inside. And he saw exactly why Pam had been so cautious.
Winter quickly closed the file, highlighted and deleted it, then went to his recycle bin and deleted it from there too. He then sat back in his chair and swigged the remainder of his beer. As he set the empty bottle down on the table in front of him, he couldn’t help but break out into a wide grin.
It looked like he had some more collateral at last.
Chapter 12
Highlands, Scotland
Fleming’s voice had come from the right. The opposite direction from where Logan had approached the area. He crouched low, peering into the dark distance for any sign of movement, listening for any other noise, voices.
Logan began to wonder whether he’d imagined the voice. But it had been so clear. Perhaps his senses were fooling him, though, as to which direction it had come from?
Then, a few seconds later, he heard the distinct sound of Fleming’s voice once again. And it was near. Logan remained as still as he could, his breathing slow and shallow, his body solid and unmoving. His mind was in overdrive.
For hours, Logan’s thoughts had been filled with ways to get his own back on Fleming, Butler and the others. Not just for what they’d done on this exercise, but for the abuse they’d so readily inflicted on Logan for weeks. He wanted to make them pay, even if harming the men at all, never mind out in the middle of a frozen wasteland where they had no way of contacting base camp, would likely be a really bad career move. The JIA were training him to be a fighter, weren’t they?
So he would fight.
Logan began to move forward, still crouching low. His steps were slow and soft, his eyes darting back and forth between the ground and the area in front of him.
He caught a glimpse in the near distance, lit up in the dim moonlight, of the familiar grey and white fatigues that he and each of the SAS men were wearing. He inched further forward, even more slowly than before. Finally he came to a stop at the base of a thick pine tree. He spotted two figures hunched over in a small clearing just yards in front of him.
Fleming and Butler.
They were huddled over a fire. Although Logan couldn’t see the flames as the fire was sunk into a pit, the ember glow emanating from the hole was clear and was lighting up the two men, the orange illumination cutting a stark contrast to the near-darkness surrounding them.
They were talking but their voices were too quiet and muffled for Logan to make out any words. He guessed they’d stopped for a longer rest; a neat pile of twigs and logs next to them suggested they were planning on keeping the fire going for some time.
Logan began to creep forward again, staying low. The clearing that Fleming and Butler were in was only about ten yards wide. There was now just one more tree between them and Logan. He edged up to it and came to a stop once more.
Keeping his eyes on the two soldiers, he felt around on the frozen ground beside him, looking for a stone or a loose branch. Anything he could use as a weapon. He found a small fallen log, about a foot long, three inches in diameter. Exactly what he needed. He turned it over in his hands, ignoring the ice-cold that seeped from the log into his bare hands, thinking through his attack. Part of him felt like a coward for even contemplating what he was about to do.
But they had it coming, didn’t they?
Logan was about to leap into action but then he stopped suddenly. A crunching noise somewhere off to his left. His gaze shot in that direction and his body froze.
Was it the trackers? Or the rest of Fleming’s men, perhaps?
Logan held his breath and waited, staring into the darkness, aware that Fleming and Butler
had stopped talking and must have heard the noise too. He risked a glance over in their direction. Butler was on his feet, peering over to where the noise had come from. Fleming had turned too, though he remained sitting on the ground. Logan followed their line of sight and a moment later there was more noise, rustling.
Logan’s heart was thudding in his chest. He gripped the log tightly. His whole body was tense.
A second later, a small grey squirrel darted out into the clearing, sniffed the air, then bounded straight back into the darkness.
Logan exhaled slowly, feeling his nerves calm. He began to caress the log again, feeling its icy surface with his fingers. But then he turned his gaze back to Fleming and Butler and his eyes widened.
Fleming was staring right at him.
Logan froze. He held his breath, his body solid, completely still except for his thumping heart. The noise seemed to fill his head and make the world before him jump with each beat.
As Logan continued to stare at his foe, Fleming’s face showed no visible reaction or emotion. No surprise or fear or anger. After a few moments had passed without so much as a blink or a twitch from Fleming, Logan could only assume that he hadn’t given his presence away and Fleming was merely staring into the black forest around him. Logan’s body was, after all, obscured by the tree that he was hunched behind and the glow from the fire didn’t reach as far as where he was.
Catching Fleming’s glare had startled Logan nonetheless. It was clear that Fleming and Butler were on high alert. Both because the trackers were somewhere out there and because they would surely assume Logan was following them.
Maybe it was more than that even. The feeling of isolation and the eerie blackness must affect even the most hardened and experienced soldiers, Logan guessed.
After a few more seconds, Fleming returned his attention to the fire pit and he and Butler began talking again, though their voices were noticeably quieter than before.
