He glanced back toward the clock on the wall. They would all know, soon enough.
5:17 P.M.
Biggin Hill Airport
Bromley, UK
“You are being placed under arrest on charges of violating the Official Secrets Act.”
A death knell in the woman’s voice, ringing again and again in Norris’ ears—a pair of uniformed CO-19 officers gripping him tightly under the arms as they pulled him to his feet, a light rain still falling on his upturned face.
“No, no, no,” he stammered, his body shuddering as he twisted his head around to stare at Vasiliev—standing there a few feet away. “You can’t do this—you can’t let them take me. You promised.”
But there was no help to be found there, no sympathy in the Russian’s face. Only contempt.
So always to traitors. . .
“He can’t help you now,” Greer observed, raising his voice to be heard, the wail of the police sirens providing a discordant accompaniment to the now-distant rumble of thunder. The storm was passing, ever so slowly, its fury spent. “He can’t even help himself. Place this man under arrest as well, Sergeant.”
“On what charge?” Vasiliev asked, that curiously unsettling smile still playing at his lips. What was his game?
The uncertainty nettled Greer. “You’re an FSB intelligence officer, operating in the UK under a false passport. I think that should about cover it. Cuff him, Sergeant Thomas.”
The policewoman moved to comply, but the Russian backed away, holding up a hand.
“Please, may I?” he asked, mindful of the officers’ weapons on he and his men—gesturing to the inner pocket of his soaked sports jacket.
She nodded cautiously, her hand resting on the pistol grip of her H&K G36—her eyes never leaving Vasiliev’s face as he produced a passport, handing it over. “I believe you’ll find everything to be in order. . .I’m not sure what Mr. Greer has been told, but I’m here in the UK officially, as a diplomat of the Russian Federation. And as such, I possess diplomatic immunity.”
The Russian was lying. It was that simple. There was just no way. . .
He saw the policewoman begin to nod, and the smile faded from Greer’s face. No.
She handed the passport over, and Greer began to leaf through it—his breath catching in his throat. Impossible.
And yet, if it were a fake, it was a high-quality one. The kind of thing the FSB were so very good at. Always had been.
But was there time. . .
“But he has the drive!”
It was a panicked, angry cry, bursting from Norris’ lips as he struggled against the officers holding him back. Betrayal.
“A drive?” Vasiliev asked, spreading his hands in a gesture of innocence as the officers dragged Norris off to the waiting Guardian. “I don’t know of what he speaks.”
He glanced back to see armed CO-19 officers escorting a young man off the plane, his hands cuffed behind him. “If you would accept a piece of advice, Mr. Greer, from a friend—”
“You’re not a friend,” Greer responded coldly. What is he playing at? Buying time? For what?
A shrug. “From an adversary, then. Tread carefully around Roman Igorevich—his father is a very, very powerful man. In both Russia and here, in the UK. Very wealthy, with many business holdings in this country. I would be cautious about trifling with his son.”
Greer nodded, his eyes boring into Vasiliev. “I’m sure you would be. But I’ll hazard the risk. Sergeant Thomas!”
“Sir?” the policewoman asked, her hand still resting on the grip of her rifle.
“Clear the plane—take everyone into temporary custody, until we’ve located the drive to which Mr. Norris refers.”
“Right away, sir.” She toggled her lip mike, speaking brusquely into it. “Rogers, Mittal, move in on the plane and clear it. Husain, maintain overwatch on the long gun.”
“Sergeant!” Greer swiveled to see one of the CO-19 officers approaching, a mobile phone in his outstretched hand. “A call for you—London.”
He exchanged an uncertain glance with Roth, watching with a growing sense of disquiet as she moved fifteen feet away, taking the call.
It was impossible to hear the conversation at that distance, but the anger and confusion was clearly visible on her broad, open face the longer she listened.
What was happening? Even as he watched, she shoved the phone back in the pocket of her tactical vest, issuing orders into her lip mike. Her voice indistinct, but the effect. . .immediately visible as the armored Guardian began to back off from its blocking position on the runway. The officers near the jet, removing the cuffs from Roman Igorevich. Backing away, their weapons now lowered.
He looked over to see Vasiliev smile, the sight enraging him beyond words. With the certainty of what had been done.
“What’s going on here, Sergeant?” Greer demanded, the anger boiling up within him as she returned to where they stood.
“My team has received orders to stand down,” she responded, her voice clear and professional. All emotion, now suppressed, somewhere deep inside. “The plane is to be allowed to depart—with its full complement.”
Disaster. Greer just stared at her for what seemed like an eternity, unable to process her words. The fury, spilling over.
“On whose authority?”
“Scotland Yard. That was Commissioner Harington herself on the phone, sir.” The head of the Met. “And I’ve been ordered to give you an escort back to Thames House. Immediately.”
We all fall down. And he could hear Ashworth’s voice, echoing once again through the chambers of his mind. “I won’t hear of you antagonizing the Russians further.”
“You don’t understand the stakes here, Sergeant. If these men are allowed to leave this country, people will die.”
She shook her head, resolution clear in her eyes. “I have my orders, sir. And respectfully, you do as well.”
There was no moving her. Anymore than one might have moved a stone wall. He turned to meet Vasiliev’s smile, easy and mocking. “It appears that you won’t be hosting me after all, Phillip. A pity. Perhaps another time. If you are ever in Russia. . .”
The Russian bowed slightly before turning away to walk back toward the business jet, flanked as ever by his mafiya escort. And all Greer could see was the death images of Dmitri Pavlovich Litvinov, lying slumped on the floor of his Hounslow flat, his body distended in death—neck twisted to one side at a grossly unnatural angle.
And he knew he had looked into the eyes of his killer.
“Sergeant Thomas,” Greer began quietly, a murderous glint visible in his eyes, just behind the thick glasses. “Give me your sidearm.”
“What are you doing, sir?” Roth’s voice, faint and indistinct. So very far away.
“That was an order, Sergeant Thomas.” His own voice sounded alien in this moment, tinged by an unfamiliar desperation. “Give me your weapon. Do it now!”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t do that.”
And he felt an officer’s hand on his arm—holding him back as they stood there, watching the Russians board the business jet, one by one. Disappearing from view within the aircraft’s fuselage. Each one of them, another nail biting deep into the lid of a coffin.
He was still standing there, his eyes hard and cold, twenty minutes later as the Embraer Legacy 4500 taxiied out onto the main runway, gathering speed as it raced down the apron like one of those fighter planes from so very long ago. Rising into the cloudy skies to the north-east. Disappearing from sight.
And through it all, a single name continued to ring through Greer’s mind. Merciless. Unforgiving.
Ashworth.
Part II
(Two weeks later)
Chapter 21
1:30 A.M. Central European Summer Time, July 28th
A hotel room
Paris, France
It had been a week since the e-mail had arrived, Grigoriy Kolesnikov thought, padding back across the soft carpet of the ho
tel room to where the laptop sat open on the wood of the bureau.
An e-mail from a dead man. Said bin Mohammed Lahcen.
He had been playing around the edges of Gamal Belkaïd’s criminal network since receiving the folder, but he hadn’t anticipated that the man himself would reach out.
Even less that it would be done in such an. . .unsubtle manner. He had clearly discovered the money in Lahcen’s accounts, but he had to know that whoever had been paying Lahcen would also know of his death.
Yet he had apparently chosen to probe anyway. See what would happen.
Moscow had taken several days to deliberate on their response, an abrogation of his own field authority that nettled Kolesnikov.
But in the end, they had made the decision to send him in. With back-up. Such as it was.
He tabbed to the e-mail client, tapping his finger impatiently against the bureau top. Eight hours.
And no response. Had he—had Moscow—waited too long? Had Belkaïd been spooked by their own non-response?
And yet the FSB’s agents-in-place within the world of European organized crime reported no signs of any such moves taking place. And a player of Belkaïd’s influence would have left signs.
Kolesnikov yawned, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. He’d spent longer nights, many of them, partying with women in Moscow’s club scene back in his early twenties, but he was no longer in his twenties, and the demands of sleep were somehow far more pressing than they had once been.
A weary smile touched his lips at the memory. Back then, the women had often mistaken him for a “Forbes”—a youthful member of Russia’s nouveau riche—but those who had come to share his bed had learned the truth.
That power could exist, separate from wealth. And was its own aphrodisiac.
A sudden ping from the laptop drew his attention back to the screen, a new message showing in the client.
A single word, displayed on-screen as he opened the message. Agreed.
It was on.
5:03 A.M.
A farmhouse
Outside Liège, Belgium
The door of the shed groaned as Harry pushed it open, stepping out into the humid, still air of the morning. He took a few steps before stooping over—hands on his knees, breathing deeply, drinking it into his lungs as though he could somehow purge himself of the odors that had surrounded him for the previous seven hours—the pungent smell of bleach that clung to him like a garment, permeating his clothing and even his very hair.
He needed a shower, badly, but he knew even that wasn’t going to be enough. This was the kind of smell that stayed with you. The smell of death.
Or at least its close cousin. Triacetone triperoxide. Or TATP, as it was known in the community parlance.
The explosive used by terrorists in the London bombings a decade before. . .and countless times since.
The explosive he’d spent the better part of the last week “cooking” several batches of in this farm shed.
He dropped down to one knee, staring up at the oak trees surrounding the small Belgian farmstead—the light of the moon filtering through the leaves, outlining their gnarly branches.
The trees were ancient—they had been here when the Wehrmacht had steamrolled through this country in 1940. When the army of the Kaiserreich had smashed its way into neutral Belgium in 1914.
Perhaps even when Napoleon had been here? It wasn’t impossible—the farmhouse was certainly that old.
He looked up to see Aryn emerge from the shed behind him, stripping off his gloves. The young man looked exhausted—neither of them had slept, a dangerous state in which to be handling a substance as volatile as TATP.
Dangers he had purposely done precious little to mitigate, Harry reminded himself, drawing in another deep breath of night air as Aryn collapsed to the grass beside him. An explosion could set them back weeks.
Perhaps more.
He was rolling the dice with his own life, and he knew it all too well, knew the consequences of a miscalculation. There wouldn’t be enough of his body left for Western intelligence agencies to even identify.
Harold Nichols would simply. . .cease to exist. And perhaps it would be far better that way.
“You doing all right, brother?” he asked, hearing Aryn cough spasmodically beside him, the young man’s body convulsing.
Aryn nodded, his face just visible in the morning darkness. “Yeah, that stuff just gets in your throat.” He grinned wryly. “I could use a drink.”
There was surprise and disapproval in Harry’s eyes, and it must have showed, because the younger man shook his head. “Oh, I don’t drink anymore. . .I know it’s haram. But I used to, back before I went to prison, and sometimes the thirst is still there.”
He went quiet for a long moment, gazing off into the darkness of the woods. “It’s going to be worth it all in the end, though, isn’t it? When we feast together in those gardens?”
“Insh’allah,” Harry whispered quietly. “Beneath which rivers flow. . .”
“I still think of what they did to her,” Aryn said after a moment, his voice filled with pain. “How my mother died. . .alone, surrounded by the unbelievers. How I couldn’t be there for her, at the end.”
“You were there for her when she needed you,” Harry responded, placing a hand on Aryn’s shoulder.
“Do you believe that?” There was a raw earnestness in the question.
“As Allah is my witness. And now, after so many years of care, He has relieved you of your obligations to your family. As He knows best.”
The young man nodded slowly. “So that I can at last fulfill my obligations to the jihad.”
“Alhamdullilah. For He is the best of planners.” The words had barely left Harry’s lips when he heard the sound of vehicle engines in the distance—the harsh glow of headlights flickering through the trees. Coming toward them.
Harry scrambled to his feet, drawing the CZ P-10 Belkaïd had given him from the holster on his belt. Bringing it up to low ready, a round already chambered.
“Get inside the house,” he warned, glancing back over his shoulder at Aryn, “and wake the others.”
If this was the Belgian security services, they wouldn’t last long, he thought—wincing in pain as he vaulted the low stone wall that ran along the edge of the entrance road toward the barn—collapsing in its shadow, his back to the wall, the pistol clutched in his hands.
And he would die first. Irony of ironies.
He was still crouched there moments later, when three SUVs rolled into the farmyard—lights reflecting off the white stucco of the farmhouse. Men spilling out of them, rough voices, raised in a mixture of French—and Arabic.
Harry rose from his crouch, the weapon still held loosely in his right hand as he turned to see Gamal Belkaïd dismount from the nearest SUV, less than ten feet away.
“Salaam alaikum, my brother.”
6:14 A.M. British Summer Time
The terraced house
Abbey Road, London
The flat was quiet in the morning—the only sound the faint snick of scissors biting into paper. Julian Marsh removed the clipping from the sheet of newsprint, tossing the previous day’s Telegraph to the floor beside his desk as his eyes scanned once more over the article, taking in the relevant passages.
Andrei Vladimirovich Dubovsky, 61. . . .former member of Russian intelligence. . .prominent businessman. . .found drowned while vacationing in Azerbaijan.
Roughly the same age as the rest, the former director-general thought grimly, opening the drawer of his desk and placing the clipping on top, the latest in a growing collection.
The right age to have been recruited by British intelligence in the waning years of the Cold War. Maintained and groomed for ever-building prominence as they rose through the ranks—as the old world was exchanged for the new. And back for the old. His own words to Ashworth, ringing once more in his ears.
And now they were dead. Dead, “disappeared”, or in prison, swept
up in a new “anti-corruption” initiative that, as ever, seemed to come nowhere near the Russian President’s acolytes.
He had no doubt there were others, if his suspicions came anywhere near the truth. Younger, lower-profile members of Russian society and government—off the radar too far to warrant a news piece. But just as surely damned to the same fate.
There had been nothing from Greer since that morning, two weeks prior. Just silence, telling Marsh all that he needed to know.
That they had failed. Their best efforts, nowhere near good enough.
It wasn’t the first time in his career that he’d been forced to face such a reality, but somehow now, sitting here in this empty flat. . .it hit home far more painfully than ever before.
Always in the past there had been the distraction of new crises to confront, the constant pressures of the intelligence business combining to keep one facing forward. Let the dead bury their dead.
Now. . .there was only this. A signal note of failure, to punctuate the end of a long career.
Marsh closed the drawer and rose, walking over to the window and pushing back the curtains to either side to let in the first rays of the morning sun. A new dawn.
And so many who hadn’t lived to see it. . .
7:31 A.M.
The farmhouse
Outside Liège, Belgium
“You’re taking a risk here,” Harry observed quietly, once Belkaïd had finished—the small group of them gathered around the farmhouse’s massive oaken dinner table. He felt Yassin’s eyes on him—only too aware of the rift which remained unhealed between them since he’d been decoyed into Belkaïd’s trap. “A risk we don’t need to take. If I am right—if Lahcen was in the pay of the security services, we’re never going to walk back out of there.”
“If you’re afraid, then I’m willing to take your place,” Marwan spoke up from the other end of the table, the hostility only too visible in his dark eyes.
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