“What do you think of this?” The voice came from behind him, educated and unhurried, with a Russian accent. “What does it mean?”
Marc turned and saw a face that hitherto he had only encountered on the front pages of newspapers or in MI6 briefing documents.
Pytor Glovkonin was a very rich man. Tall and imposing, he had features that were all hard angles, with a light and perfectly trimmed beard that did nothing to soften him. A billionaire energy tsar with massive holdings across the Russian Federated States, he was the very model of the ex-Soviet oligarch, politician and mafiya, a captain of New Russia’s industry with a shady past that British Intelligence could only guess at. Glovkonin’s name and that of his pet conglomerate G-Kor had risen to the attention of both MI6 and MI5. The billionaire had many investments in the UK, and rumors of his connection to organized crime did not sit well with the British government. But there had never been anything other than hearsay, nothing actionable, leaving the man free to spend his wealth buying up choice parts of Knightsbridge and the occasional premier league football team.
“Well?” he prompted, gesturing at the sculpture before them. “I would think a man paying this much attention to such a piece would have an opinion.”
“It’s complicated,” Marc offered, actually looking at the sculpture for the first time. Art had never really been his strong point.
Glovkonin gave a grunt of laughter. “Life is complicated. Art is supposed to be simple.”
“You think so? The roof of the Sistine Chapel is pretty busy.”
That got him a nod. “Of course. But the ideal behind the work is uncomplicated. God meets man. That’s all there is to it.”
“Well, then maybe what this piece means is art isn’t simple.”
The other man shrugged. He had the easy, magnetic charm of someone used to being the master of his world. “The intent of the creator is meaningless. Only what we, the audience, believe is of importance. What I say this means, it means.”
“That must be a nice position to be in.” He glanced away. Three of the security staff had gathered near one of the fountains, talking quietly. Marc knew that any moment now they would turn in his direction. He resisted the urge to steal a peek at his watch.
Glovkonin gave him a considering look. “You’re English. From London, yes? Are you part of the embassy staff?”
Marc shook his head. “I’m here to see a friend.” He didn’t like Glovkonin’s scrutiny. The man had eyes like a wolf, constantly searching for weakness.
“Is it a woman? This friend of yours?”
“No…” For a moment, Marc caught sight of a girl with long dark hair, her face blurred, which then became Sam Green’s. “No,” he repeated more firmly, banishing the thought.
“You have the air of a worried man,” said Glovkonin, as if he were reading Marc’s thoughts. “In my experience a man with that look only has it for two reasons. The first is always because of a woman.” He shared a smile with his bodyguard. “The second comes from having a knife at the throat.” He placed his thumb to his neck to underline his point. “So if it isn’t a woman, then what concerns you, Mister…?”
“Pardon me, Sir?” The woman in the black pantsuit had appeared beside him before he could answer. “There’s a telephone call for you.” Close up, he could see the gray comma of a wireless radio earpiece hidden under the cut of her hair.
Glovkonin met Marc’s gaze and it was clear that the other man knew there was no telephone, no call, nothing but trouble waiting for him. “Here she is,” he noted, with deceptive lightness.
“If you’ll come with me, please?” The woman gestured for Marc to step away. Her other hand drifted toward the small of her back. What did she have holstered there? A pistol? Too noisy. More likely a stun gun.
Marc very deliberately looked back to Glovkonin. “What time do you have?”
The other man raised an eyebrow, then drew out an antique watch from a fob pocket and snapped it open. “Thirty minutes past seven.”
“Now, sir.” All pretense at politeness was now gone.
“Nice meeting you,” Marc said, with a wan smile. He walked away, and the security officer fell into step with him.
“Mister Torrance is very upset about losing his invite,” she said quietly, looking him up and down. “Also his suit. And his car.” She was leading him to the rest of the waiting security team.
He halted a few feet away and they all flinched. “My name is Marc Dane,” he began.
“We know who you are,” said the woman. “Don’t make us do something you’ll regret.”
“You’re not going to make a fuss,” he snapped, and jerked a thumb in Glovkonin’s direction. The billionaire was still watching with interest. “Not in front of him and the rest of these people.” Before she could threaten him again, Marc went on. “I’m here to turn myself in. I’m going to surrender, but only to someone I know.”
“You don’t get to give orders, Dane.”
His lips thinned. “You bring me John Farrier.”
“There’s no one here by that name.” She was going to say more, but then Marc caught the faint buzz of a voice from the woman’s earpiece and she hesitated. “Stand there. Don’t talk and don’t move,” she said, at length.
Marc did as he was told, and within a few moments he recognized a familiar figure threading his way through the party-goers. John Farrier’s expression was a mix of relief and disappointment.
Farrier gave the woman a nod. “Lane, stand down.”
“Not bloody likely,” she retorted. “This man is a rogue agent.”
Marc drained his wineglass and set it down on a nearby table, acutely aware that by now there was probably a sniper on the roof with crosshairs on his skull. He offered Farrier a weak grin. “Hey, man. Glad to see me?”
“Fuck, no.” Farrier shook his head. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Take me in, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Sir,” began the woman, “I don’t think you—”
Farrier raised his hand to silence her. “Tracey, I’ve got this, all right?” He glared at Marc. “Come with me.”
He followed his friend toward the main building, chancing a last look over his shoulder.
Pytor Glovkonin had watched the whole interchange from afar, and he raised his glass to Marc in what could have been an expression of good luck, or a farewell to a defeated man.
* * *
They took him to a holding room on the first floor and took everything he had on him. Lane put a hand on Marc’s shoulder, digging into nerve points under his flesh, uncomfortably close to where he had been injured a few days ago.
“Sit down.” She shoved him into a chair and stalked around the table in the middle of the room, glaring at him. Farrier took the seat next to him, and outside the door, through a glass partition, Marc watched another man take up a guard position. The man in the corridor was armed with a pistol, holding it out and to the ready.
“You’ve got some nerve,” said Lane, circling him. “Did you really think you could walk in here using another man’s identity without us noticing?”
“No,” Marc admitted. “But it took you a while, didn’t it?”
She ignored the comment and addressed Farrier. “He was talking to Glovkonin. What was that about?”
“He likes art,” Marc explained. “You’ve got a problem with me sneaking in, but apparently its okay for Six to let shady Russians come to the party, as long as they’re billionaires, yeah?”
Farrier sniffed. “He’s never been charged with anything.”
“Unlike you,” Lane insisted.
The door opened and another man brought in Marc’s case before exiting again without a word, leaving the luggage open for Lane to paw through. In short order she pulled out the daypack bundled up inside, the scuffed laptop and the pistol. Lane laid them out on the table next to the contents of Marc’s pockets, his wallet and wristwatch, all arranged neatly like items of evidence at a trial
.
“I travel light.” Marc feigned indifference. “What time you got?”
“Seven forty,” offered Farrier, leaning forward. “I wouldn’t worry about the clock if I were you. There’s a lot of people back home who have a lot of questions for you.”
Marc said nothing, measuring his old friend’s expression. John’s manner betrayed little. With Lane in the room with them, he couldn’t speak openly about what had happened at Vauxhall Cross.
What little he could read of Farrier spoke to frustration, maybe even sadness. Marc saw the slightest edge of it in the other man’s eyes. What is he thinking? Is he angry with me because I didn’t run when I had the chance?
“Who was the sniper in Walworth?” Farrier’s question came out of nowhere. “The one who covered you when the strike team went in?”
He remembered the subsonic hum of the gunshot coming out of nowhere on the damp rooftop, the man sent to kill him falling away wounded. “I have no idea,” he replied, and it was the truth. “All I know is that tactical team was there to shoot me dead, not take me in.”
Farrier blew out a breath, his expression softening. “Someone buggered up the paperwork. Big stink about it at HQ.”
“Oh.” Marc sat back. “So it was a clerical error, then? That makes me feel a lot better, cheers.” He looked up at the neon strip light over their heads, then away.
“Should you even be telling him any of that?” Lane demanded.
Farrier didn’t answer her. “I’ve got to say, I’m amazed you made it this far, Marc. You know Welles was on you the moment they picked up that call from Sicily? Bad tradecraft, mate. You sent up a flare. He warned me you might try to make contact, but I told him you wouldn’t be that stupid.”
“I’m not as smart as I look.” Marc’s retort was dry. He knew that as they spoke, someone in the security detail was trying to contact Welles back in London, perhaps dragging him away from some pricey dinner date. As soon as he and Royce knew Marc had been captured, the hammer would fall hard and his window of opportunity would be closed permanently.
He glanced at Lane. “Tracey, right? What time do you have, Tracey?”
Her irritation deepened. “Why do you keep asking that?” she snapped.
Outside, there were muffled thuds of concussion, and then a hooting chorus of car alarms.
* * *
Acrid clumps of white smoke churned from the wheel wells of a dozen vehicles, the sudden stink of burned sugar and rotten eggs hanging in the air. Predictably, the result was an immediate surge of panic as the embassy’s guests discarded their vols-au-vent and sought to put as much distance as they could between the outbreak of “fire” and themselves. Private security details clustered around their principals, and the embassy guards—already on high alert, thanks to Dane’s gate crashing—went out in full force.
The smokers were not really IEDs in the real sense of the term. Barely-dangerous nuisance devices at best, Marc had cobbled them together in the dingy little hostel from innocuous, store-bought ingredients. A thick paste of potassium nitrate and sucrose in the right formulation yielded “wet” smoke bombs that were less risky to homebrew than more volatile pyrotechnics. Marc had discarded or eaten the sachets of food in the surplus NATO-issue MRE packs, but kept the flameless chemical heater pads that soldiers used to warm them in the field. Wrapped around the bricks of putty, the activated heaters took around twenty minutes to bring their contents up to flashpoint. The distraction was good, but it would only last until the non-lethal nature of it was revealed.
Marc didn’t waste a second. He threw himself across the table and snatched up the Glock. To her credit, Tracey Lane didn’t waste time trying to beat him to it, and she reeled back, tearing a short-framed Sig Sauer semi-automatic from a paddle holster in the small of her back. He registered the firearm with a distant, passing thought, realizing his earlier surmise about Lane carrying a taser had been very wrong.
She was shouting something, but Marc wasn’t listening. He was back on his feet, yanking Farrier up out of his chair, shoving him forward as a human shield. His blood thundering in his ears, Marc jammed the Glock’s muzzle into the soft tissues of Farrier’s throat.
“Back the fuck off!” he bellowed, his voice rebounding off the walls of the office.
Farrier went limp in his grip and Marc pulled him close, blocking the path of any shot Lane might be thinking of putting his way. The door behind her slammed open and the guard outside came in, his weapon drawn.
Marc pulled his hostage back to the wall and edged around the table. Lane was still shouting at him and he glared at her over Farrier’s shoulder, choking out a threat. “I will shoot him. Don’t test me.”
In her eyes there was raw hatred. Marc had validated the woman’s initial reading of him, and she must have felt a brief flash of conceit as she told herself how right she’d been.
“Mate,” Farrier was saying. “Stop this now. You’re only making things worse.”
“Don’t talk,” he snapped. “You!” He jerked his chin at the armed guard. “Put the laptop in the backpack and slide it over. The wallet and watch, too.”
Lane gave the guard a wary nod and he did as he was told. “You won’t escape,” she said. “You know that.”
A harsh, broken chuckle threatened to push its way out of Marc’s mouth. Escape wasn’t his priority. As if to underline his point, the embassy’s fire alarms belatedly started to sound. He prodded Farrier with the pistol. “Pick up the bag.”
“Where are you going to go?” Lane demanded.
He answered her with gunfire. Shoving Farrier toward the open door, Marc fired two rounds up into the humming neon strip hanging over the table. The shots struck home, and the lighting tube exploded in a shower of sparks, plastic and glass. With nothing but evening twilight coming in through the window blinds, the interview room was plunged into shadows. It was the impetus Dane needed to shove Farrier out into the corridor, shouldering him through the doorway like a rugby fullback bulling a flanker into the mud. He kicked the door closed and tipped a nearby rack of shelves across it, blocking the room enough to hinder Lane and the other guard for a few moments.
He turned in time for Farrier to come at him with the daypack, swinging it like an ungainly club. Marc deflected the blow before it could connect with his gun hand and swore violently. “Move!” he shouted, pointing down the corridor with his free hand, waving the pistol with the other. “Just bloody move!”
“You’ve lost it,” Farrier managed, as they threaded through the first floor corridors. “Oh shit, I can’t believe I helped you.” He stumbled to a halt and rounded on Marc. “Did you do it? Fuck me, did you actually do it, you bastard? I know you never liked Nash, but Sam and Rix—”
The icy calm came back from where it had been hiding all this time and Marc shook his head. “I’m innocent of that, if nothing else.” He nodded toward a door leading to one of the embassy’s communications rooms. “In here. Before they see us.”
“That’s not a way out,” Farrier told him. “No windows, no other doors.”
“I know. Go on, get in.”
Inside, the whine of the fire alarms was lessened by the thick sound-deadening door. The communication room was colder than the rest of the building, chilled by the action of air conditioning fans working to keep a small computer server and mainframe system operating, even in the most dazzling of Roman summers.
The moment they were alone, Marc spun the Glock around in his hand and offered it to Farrier. “I’m sorry, John. But this is the only play I had.”
Farrier gingerly took the gun. He rubbed at the reddening patch on his throat. “I direct you to my earlier statement,” he managed. “You’ve lost it.”
“Likely,” Marc agreed, taking a seat before a monitor and keyboard. Faster and more secure than the old Aramis networks of the previous decade, MI6’s intelligence messaging network booted up in short order. With a couple of quick commands, he bypassed the first layer of the emergency lockout tri
ggered automatically by the fire alarm, and brought up a screen demanding a password and login. “If you would do the honors?”
“You … want my network access? What good is that going to do? My clearance can’t get you anything useful.”
Marc shook his head and snatched the backpack from him. “You’d be surprised.” He opened the laptop and set it next to the monitor, snaking a thin cable between the two. Marc had programmed a quick-and-dirty search macro to match the pattern data taken from Novakovich’s hard drive with the signal records in MI6’s communication’s database. He explained the high points of this to Farrier as he double-clicked a string of icons on the screen. “I’ve got scraps of information, nothing more,” said Marc. “But if I can compare it with Six’s email logs, I can see who was talking and maybe even what they were talking about.” He shot Farrier a look that had more pleading in it than he liked. “Proof, John. It’ll be proof that someone gutted my OpTeam and hung it on me.”
Farrier put it together. “That’s why you did something as ball-achingly idiotic as coming to Rome. Because you knew I would be here?”
“Because I trust you,” Marc retorted. He lifted his hands up from the keyboard. “Was that a mistake?”
The other man sighed heavily. “You think someone’s dirty back at the Cross, then?” He didn’t wait for Marc to give him an answer. “Ah, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I was suspicious about everything that happened at Dunkirk. And frankly, I never liked how that nasty little turd Welles has it in for you. He wants to fix the blame and call it done, take the win like a trophy or something.” Farrier shook his head.
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