‘A cop,’ said Rik. ‘But he looked OK. The Russians got away.’
Clare nodded and looked at Harry. ‘Have you still got friends in dark places?’
‘You mean Six? Yes, why?’
‘I got their registration.’ She recited the number and make of car. ‘It’s probably been dumped already but someone might see who left it.’
Harry texted Ballatyne with the details. He didn’t hold out much hope of it carrying a trace, but it was worth a try this early on in the day.
Ballatyne called him five minutes later. ‘You’ve got Jardine there with you?’ He sounded surprised. ‘I suppose it would be asking too much for her to pop in for a chat.’
‘Why don’t you ask her.’
Harry passed the phone to Clare, who listened for a second, then said, ‘Dream on, Ballatyne. I’ll deal with Tate and Ferris, but that’s it.’ She passed the phone back and pulled her jacket around her.
‘She’s a little charmer, isn’t she?’ Ballatyne commented. ‘Still, can’t blame her, I suppose. Leave this with me and I’ll put out a city-wide search.’
‘You do that.’ Harry thought about the street camera and its scope of coverage. ‘You might have someone check out a camera across the junction from the cafe, above a kitchen shop. If it’s working, it should give you a clear shot of everyone arriving and leaving the Starbucks where Clare was approached. They were the same two from the hospital.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Ballatyne clearly meant with Clare.
‘For the moment, keep our heads down.’
‘Where?’
‘You don’t need to know.’
‘That sounds ominous.’
‘Don’t blame me. You’re the ones with the leaky windows.’
Ballatyne gave a grudging murmur. ‘Fair comment.’ He paused, then said, ‘I want you to come in for a meeting. We need to get some action decided and I need your input.’
Harry thought about arguing against it; he hadn’t been near Vauxhall Cross or Thames House since leaving the Security Service, and didn’t want to do so now. But it might give him some advantage if he knew what the official security agencies’ line was. Sitting in on a meeting wouldn’t be so bad.
But Ballatyne took his silence for assent and pre-empted him. ‘There’s a security office door opening onto Great Scotland Yard, next to the Civil Service Club. Ask the guard inside to direct you to room 101.’
Harry nearly laughed. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘I wish I were. Life imitating art, I’m afraid. It’s a genuine meeting room where embarrassing or annoying issues get shelved for good. You should feel quite at home there. One hour. Please don’t be late.’
He hung up without saying goodbye.
‘Where are you taking me?’
They were in Harry’s car heading north. Clare was bundled in the back seat, hunched over and clutching her stomach. She looked deathly pale and Rik was keeping an eye on her from the front passenger seat. They had hit the area around Sloane Square barely five minutes from the scene of the shooting, leaving behind a growing atmosphere of activity and blue lights, with a police helicopter already coming in over the rooftops and hovering overhead.
‘Hospital would be a good place to start,’ said Harry, steering them up towards Knightsbridge. ‘You need checking over.’
‘Forget it. I’ve had enough of hospitals. Give me some painkillers and I’ll be fine.’
‘Your call.’ Harry knew enough not to waste time arguing. ‘We’ll go to Rik’s place. It’s not far and you can rest up there until we decide what to do.’
‘Why bother? Let me out anywhere — I told you, I’ll be fine.’ She sat up and peered through the window to get her bearings, eyeing the up-market stores and the expensive cars jostling for space at the kerb. ‘Jesus, not here, though. Too many cops and security guards.’
‘Too many cameras, too,’ said Harry. ‘It’s how they got onto you in the first place.’
She scowled and leaned forward between the seats, working on the implications of that. ‘I was wondering how it happened. I must be getting slow. But how could they do it without help?’
‘That’s what we’d like to know,’ said Rik. ‘They moved bloody quick, considering. Maybe they’ve been here before and know the ground.’
‘They haven’t.’ She winced and grabbed for the seat as they squeezed through the lights and headed towards Hyde Park Corner. ‘The tall one, the one in charge, he said they were new here and they’d never be back. He meant he could shoot me and walk away. It’s how their direct action teams work; in and out and move on. God knows, they’ve got enough personnel to rotate them a hundred times over if they need to.’
‘You seem to know a lot about them,’ Rik commented.
‘I had to, once; it was part of the job. The FSB were the enemy. Still are.’
Harry said, ‘Did they give any clues about why they’re here or who they report to?’
She shook her head. ‘No. They were in the hospital to deal with Tobinskiy, then came after me. They must have realised I’d bugged out of King’s because I’d heard too much. If I could speak Russian, I was a threat. So I had to be eliminated.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘They don’t change, do they? They have a problem, they take it out.’ She spoke matter-of-factly, as if discussing the disposal of trash.
‘So why didn’t they just shoot you inside? Better still, wait for you on the street and deal with you there?’
‘Beats me. I think they were having fun, showing how clever they were.’ She paused. ‘The tall one said I’d embarrassed them and led them a dance. I don’t know what he meant by it, but I can guess.’
Harry didn’t say anything for a few moments, focussing on the traffic. Then he said, ‘So can I. Getting away from the hospital the way you did put them on the spot. They weren’t supposed to leave any witnesses. They might have wanted to take you back alive to regain the lost ground with whoever’s controlling them.’
‘That makes me sound like a bloody trophy,’ Clare muttered. But she didn’t argue the point and lay down with a soft groan, her head on the seat.
‘One thing’s for sure,’ said Rik bluntly. ‘They weren’t going to hang on to you for long.’ There was no answer and he glanced at Harry. ‘What are you going to be doing?’ he asked softly.
‘I’ve got a meeting to go to.’ Harry didn’t enlarge on it. It was better not to give Clare another reason to cut and run. In her condition she wouldn’t last five minutes out there. ‘Can you watch her? Don’t let her go out.’
Rik nodded with a wry smile. ‘Will do. She’s still a grumpy cow, but I owe her that.’
THIRTY-TWO
While Harry drove them north towards Paddington, the two FSB men were on a similar course, but further east, eager to get clear of the inevitable police cordon being thrown up around Pimlico.
‘Who is that bloody woman?’ Votrukhin was finding it hard to contain his anger at losing Jardine so easily, and slammed a fist against the passenger door panel. The same questions he’d asked Jardine had been going through his mind in an endless rote, demanding answers. ‘How the hell does she know about Troparevskiy?’
‘The Internet,’ Serkhov ventured. ‘Every school kid with a PC can find out where we are these days. When we get back we should get the Sixth-Oh-Sixth Rocket Regiment to use some of their specials to shoot down the Google Earth satellites. They’re nothing but trouble.’
Votrukhin ignored him. He was too busy trying not to think about their next meeting with Gorelkin. The colonel would be uncontrollable at this second failure, and would probably have them on the next plane back to Moscow in disgrace. The likelihood of them surviving as members of the Special Purpose Centre were about as high as an armed Chechen terrorist in the middle of Red Square with a smoking bomb in his hand being invited in for vodka and zakuski.
Serkhov said nothing. It had been he who had opened fire, shooting the cop who had leapt out of his car to stop them, in spite of Votrukhin
’s orders. He focussed instead on driving and keeping his eyes open for police cars or road blocks. Neither of them was sure how the British authorities might react to the shooting, but it was likely to involve a concerted raid on cameras on the ground and in the air. They had already seen how easy it was to track an individual on foot across the city; following a car, even among a flow of similar vehicles, would not be a problem. The added advantage of number recognition programmes would pin them down very quickly.
‘We have to get rid of this car,’ Votrukhin said, regaining his calm. It would not help their case, losing it, but cars were disposable assets and this one, like others they could use, was untraceable. ‘Did you check any places we can use?’
Serkhov nodded. As the driver, it was his responsibility to find a way of disposing of the car should they run into trouble, like now. ‘There’s a place near Shepherd’s Bush. They can make a car disappear in an hour.’ He made a chopping motion with his hand. ‘Tiny pieces, then melted down. No traces, no fingerprints, nothing.’
‘Good. Go there now.’
Ten minutes later they were cruising along Park Lane when Serkhov swore. Two police cars had appeared in the distance behind them, lights flashing to help them carve through the traffic. More blue lights were flashing up ahead and there was already a build-up of cars and buses blocking the road around Marble Arch.
‘What the hell?’ Votrukhin twisted in his seat to watch the two following cars with a feeling of alarm. ‘They can’t have traced us yet. It’s impossible.’
‘So why are they sitting on our tails then, and blocking the road ahead? They must have the description of this car.’
Votrukhin thought about it for a couple of seconds before logic took over. He sat back and faced the front. ‘Yes. But they’re throwing up an outer cordon, that’s all. They can’t yet know who we are or where we are for sure. But if we get caught inside it, we’re stuck.’
‘What do we do? We can’t dump this right here — they’d see us.’
‘I know.’ Votrukhin glanced quickly around, feeling a lot less calm than he sounded. They were just coming up level with the Grosvenor House building, where they had had their meeting with Gorelkin and the English traitor, Paulton. There were streets on that side, where they could lose themselves long enough to dispose of the car and walk away. But that was on the other side of Park Lane, with an expanse of grass, flowerbeds and trees in the central reservation behind a V-shaped metal barrier that looked too strong to burst through. On this side there were no streets, just the railed-off expanse of Hyde Park, which offered no escape whatsoever.
‘There!’ He pointed ahead to a ramp going into an underground car park. Any CCTV system would have the car instantly, but by the time the authorities got round to studying it, he and Serkhov would be long gone. They wouldn’t dare risk coming back to the car, but that was too bad.
Serkhov responded calmly, signalling and cutting neatly into the inside lane. They were already dropping out of sight as the two police cars swished by.
‘Keep your face averted from the cameras,’ Votrukhin warned Serkhov. ‘This isn’t over yet.’ He pointed at a corner space, jammed between a Jaguar and a 7-Series BMW. ‘In here. Leave the keys in the ignition. With luck it will be gone within the hour.’
‘What about Gorelkin? He’ll go nuts if we dump it.’
‘Gorelkin can go screw himself. We’re the ones in danger here, not him. Now do it.’
Serkhov did as he was ordered and parked the car. Moments later they were walking away from the car, heads down and with their faces partially covered by their mobiles, two businessmen hurrying to a meeting.
But their departure wasn’t entirely unseen. In the shadows, behind a primped-up van with fat tyres and tinted windows, two men stopped trying to open the doors and watched them go, drawn to the interior light of the BMW and the partially open passenger door.
THIRTY-THREE
Richard Ballatyne was waiting to greet Harry on the second floor landing of a building in Great Scotland Yard. The security guard nodded and left them to it, and Ballatyne walked away trailing a crooked finger.
‘Sorry about the rush,’ he said quietly. ‘But this was an opportunity to get several important heads together on record without going through a full-blown meeting with everyone and their brother from the Sec of State down. We’ve got two gofers on a watching brief from the wider cabinet office and one from COBRA; a sit-in for the Joint Intelligence Committee; Commander John Crampton from CO19. . and Candida Deane of the Russian Desk.’ The pause there was, Harry sensed, deliberate. A warning.
‘Nobody from Five?’ His old employers. He was surprised. Anything involving the activities of foreign agents in the country should have had MI5 representatives here in droves, jostling for the prize.
‘No. For reasons I’ll tell you about later, they’ve agreed to let us run with this. But they are still involved.’
‘Great,’ Harry murmured. ‘And Deane? Should I be worried?’
Ballatyne threw a brief smile over his shoulder as he turned a corner in the corridor and walked towards a heavy oak door at the far end. Unlike the others, it bore no number or name plate. ‘Not really — not inside this place, anyway. She’ll be muzzled by the presence of the others, although she might still try to bite. And she’s no friend of Clare Jardine’s. You’d do well to remember that.’
‘Any specific reason?’ Clare had worked the Russian department. It wouldn’t be too surprising if there was history involved.
‘Deane was a protegee of Sir Anthony Bellingham.’
Christ. That was more than reason enough.
Ballatyne opened the door and ushered Harry through, stepping past a tall man with a flat-top haircut and broad shoulders standing just inside. Clearly a minder. The room was functional and spare, with a long table bordered by chairs and a sideboard holding a stack of notepads and, oddly, a Bible. The walls were panelled with oak and hung with pictures that had probably been there since the place was built. It smelled to Harry of paperwork, ink and dry, dusty talk, and possessed all the soul and atmosphere of a coal bunker. Just right, he thought, for disposing of embarrassing issues. It reminded him of another room not far from here, where his own career in MI5 had been consigned to a skip by a committee of faceless suits, before being posted on what had very nearly been a one-way trip to Georgia.
He nodded at the faces around the table as Ballatyne made introductions, instantly forgetting the names of the civil servant attendees. He received a cordial enough smile from Commander Crampton, which told him that the Met’s firearms unit officer didn’t know who or what he was, and a cool look of assessment from Candida Deane, a blonde with a cool, businesslike stare behind large glasses, who undoubtedly did. Crampton looked like a rugby player who had played just a little too close to the ball.
Deane looked even tougher.
‘This is a little off the cards,’ Ballatyne began, once they were all settled, ‘because the situation is a little unusual. You all know the basics, but just so that we’re all up to speed, I’ll outline it in extremely simple terms, to save time.’
‘Just a moment.’ Candida Deane was looking at Ballatyne but flicked an imperious finger towards Harry. ‘Does Tate have clearance for this meeting? I don’t recall his details being submitted for approval.’
Ballatyne appeared to have been expecting the interruption. He merely smiled and said, ‘Mr Tate is a former MI5 officer and has my full confidence. He has completed various assignments for us both here and overseas, and worked with the UN in highly confidential circumstances. He is also carded which, as some of you might not know, means he has been security vetted to carry a firearm. That places him higher on the secure list than many people who habitually sit in this room. May I?’
Deane nodded grudgingly and made a pointed note on a pad in front of her. But not before shooting Harry a final glance of assessment.
‘Earlier this afternoon,’ Ballatyne continued, ‘two gunmen shot and w
ounded an unarmed police officer on Pimlico Road, SW1. The officer was answering a call by a member of the public standing on the pavement. The two men had left their car in a reserved bay and entered a Starbucks cafe in search of a former MI6 operative named Clare Jardine. Miss Jardine left the cafe pursued by the men. They fired shots at her, which is when the officer was hit, but I understand she managed to escape unharmed.’
‘Who were the gunmen?’ one of the suits from the Cabinet Office queried, pencil poised to make a note. ‘And why would they be after a former officer? Is this a revenge thing?’
‘I was coming to that. They are thought to be Russian FSB operatives, most likely from their Special Purpose Centre, and responsible for the death of Roman Tobinskiy in King’s College Hospital’s Major Trauma Unit three nights ago. As you might know, Tobinskiy was a close friend and associate of Alexander Litvinenko, and shared his disenchantment with the Russian government. He had also made public those views, like Litvinenko. However, the reason for their attack on Miss Jardine was because she was a patient in the same corridor as Tobinskiy and witnessed the men’s presence in the unit.’
‘Was a patient?’ Deane lifted an eyebrow as if this was news. All heads swivelled her way, then back.
Ballatyne didn’t miss a beat. ‘Yes. She speaks Russian and had heard Tobinskiy rambling while sedated. It told her enough to know that he considered himself at severe risk — a fact already reinforced by his own shooting in Brighton several days before, which was why he was in the unit in the first place. . as you know.’ He waited a brief second for the meaning to sink home to the others, then continued, ‘The attacker then was thought to be East European, most likely also FSB or at least a contractor. The moment Jardine heard the two men speaking, she guessed what they were going to do and that they wouldn’t want any witnesses. There was nothing she could do to stop them, so she left the hospital before they could return.’
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