Melissa had such a bubbly nature, it was hard to believe that nine months earlier she’d been lying in a medically induced coma, the result of smoke inhalation from the fire that had killed his wife. It had been a tense few days, but she didn’t seem to have been affected that badly, though Gray knew it would be another couple of years before any damage would be fully known. Her brain had been starved of oxygen for a number of minutes, and that meant a fair chance that she would grow to be at least mildly impaired. Any damage had yet to be seen, however, and Gray gave thanks each day that his daughter’s development remained so unremarkable.
He turned the car onto the dirt track that was signposted Broughton Farm. Another yellow sign warned trespassers to steer clear, and a locked steel gate reinforced the message. Gray used his key to open it, and followed the rutted track until he came to a two-storey house.
Half a dozen cars were parked off to one side, and Gray pulled into an empty space next to them. He carried Melissa through the front door of the building, which had been converted into a training suite.
In an office off to the left, he found Sonny Baines sitting at a desk and tapping away on a laptop.
‘Morning.’
‘Hi, Tom.’ Sonny grinned and gave baby Melissa a wink. ‘How’s it going?’
Simon ‘Sonny’ Baines was so named because of his youthful looks. He’d looked like a school kid when he’d passed selection for the SAS, and twenty years on he could still pass for a college graduate.
It had been a while since Gray had seen a smile on Sonny’s face. It was probably owing to Gray’s recent decision to set up a training and evaluation programme for Sonny to run. Doing so had killed two birds: Sonny was finally doing something that enabled him to play with guns again, and Gray got to see his recruits in action, rather than having to depend on references alone. It had been four months since he’d first proposed the idea to Smart, and what followed had been plenty of hard work to get everything organised. Buying the buildings and land, and securing permits for live-fire exercises and renovations had taken a lot of effort and money, but it had been worth it. Sonny was back in his element, and now Gray could pick only the very best operatives for his clients.
‘Not too bad,’ Gray said. ‘Just thought I’d pop in to see how the latest batch are getting on.’
‘They’re mostly a good bunch. One or two could be putting in a bit more effort, but I think we’ve got some real talent on show. They’re having lunch at the moment, and afterwards I’ll get them together for some shooting practice.’
‘I’ll hang around for that if you don’t mind. I miss the smell of cordite in the morning.’
Sonny opened a drawer and emerged with a tiny pair of ear defenders.
‘I got these for Melissa. I knew you wouldn’t come along without her.’
Gray’s daughter grabbed for the pink, fluffy protective ear muffs, complete with Peppa Pig motif.
‘Thanks, Sonny. Though I think she’s more likely to eat them than wear them.’
As expected, the moment Gray put the contraption on Melissa’s head, she tried to pull it off and put it in her mouth. He tried swapping the ear muffs for her toy sheep, but Melissa was having none of it.
‘I think we need two pairs,’ Sonny said. ‘One for her ears, the other for her lunch.’
Gray agreed. ‘So maybe I’ll skip the range today.’
‘Why not just strap her into her car seat for a few minutes?’
‘No, thanks. I’m not leaving her alone, not even for a minute.’
Sonny sat in his chair and leant back. ‘You know, you mollycoddle her too much.’
Gray shrugged. ‘Daddy’s privilege.’
‘I know, but the time will come when you’ve got to let her go.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘What about nursery?’ Sonny asked. ‘Or school? Are you going to sit in on her classes? Don’t you think the other kids might notice the menacing six-footer in the corner?’
Gray conceded the point. It was something he thought about every day, but that all seemed so far in the future. Eventually he would have to cut her loose and let her start growing up like any other child, but it just seemed too soon. The painful memories of his wife’s death still haunted his dreams, and his personal vow never to let his daughter out of his sight had quietly become an obsession.
‘I’m thinking of home-schooling her.’
Gray actually had looked into the possibility, and there seemed no real barriers. He was certainly intelligent enough, and taking his daughter on educational trips wouldn’t be limited to strict term timetables.
‘Great, that’s good. And during playtime, who will she be socialising with? Daddy?’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘She needs to be around kids her own age, man. While she’s supposed to be skipping and playing hopscotch, you’ll have her stripping down an AK-47.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ Gray said, but as the words left his mouth, he knew Sonny was right. Melissa needed to run and play and scream with other children, not sit with her boring old father.
‘I guess one day I’ll have to cut the apron strings,’ Gray admitted.
‘No time like the present,’ Sonny smiled. ‘Take her out to the car and strap her in. She’ll be fine for a few minutes.’
Gray reluctantly took Sonny’s advice and carried his daughter back out to the BMW. He strapped her into the child seat and gave her the sheep to keep her occupied.
‘Here’s some music,’ he sing-songed, putting one of her CDs into the player. ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ filled the saloon, and Gray closed and locked the doors after turning on the air-conditioning. It wasn’t that hot a day, but he wanted her to be comfortable.
He found it hard to tear himself away from the vehicle, but Sonny took his arm and led him back inside the house.
‘Relax. The gate’s locked and the car’s secure. She’ll be fine.’
Gray couldn’t resist looking back a couple of times, but as the car was still there and wasn’t being attacked by hordes of bad guys, he decided Sonny had a point. He was being over-protective, and it was time to snap out of it.
‘Okay, show me what these guys can do.’
Sonny led him to the indoor range. In its previous incarnation it had been a milking shed, but the economic downturn and supermarket price wars had squeezed the farmer dry. The cows were long gone, and the walls of the twenty-metre building were now soundproofed. At one end stood a row of empty tables, while at the far end a bank of soil covered with sandbags sat behind a set of man-sized targets.
‘If you don’t mind setting up the targets, I’ll go and get the lads.’
Gray walked downrange and replaced the bullet-ridden paper with new cut-outs. He was just setting them side-on when Sonny returned with six men in tow, two of them carrying a large, metal box between them.
Gray introduced himself and stood back while Sonny explained the purpose of the test.
‘Ten rounds each using a Glock 17 at twenty metres. The targets will appear for three seconds, and you’ll be drawing from a shoulder holster. Let’s see what you can do.’
Sonny unlocked the box and handed out the holsters. The men put them on while Sonny checked the weapons and placed one in front of each candidate. He then put a box of ammunition next to each man and told them to load up.
While the men filled the magazines, Gray called Sonny over and pointed out a recruit named Mackenzie. At well above six feet, Mackenzie towered over most of the others, though his size didn’t seem to slow him down any. Together, Gray and Sonny watched the tall recruit loading rounds into the clip, his ebony fingers deftly making short work of the exercise.
‘According to his application, he spent some time in central Africa with his last employer,’ Gray said quietly to Sonny. ‘He’d be useful for the Benin mission. The curr
ent squad will be rotating home in a few weeks, and we need replacements who won’t take too long to acclimatise.’
‘He’s one of the better ones,’ Sonny said. ‘He aced the five-mile run this morning, and his intelligence test was one of the highest scores we’ve seen. He’s also proficient in six languages, including Hausa. His father was from Niger, which made his last mission a bit of a homecoming. What troubles me is that he left E squadron after just a few months.’
Known as the elite of the elite, E squadron was the successor to the shadowy Increment, which had been made up primarily of British soldiers who had attained the SAS rank of sergeant. As with the Increment, the role of E squadron’s hand-picked soldiers was to assist MI6 operatives in the most sensitive of operations. Many aspired to join the ranks, but few made it.
‘I saw that, but he said in his application that it was for personal reasons. A fiancée, wasn’t it?’
‘Apparently,’ Sonny shrugged. ‘Can’t knock a guy for wanting a private life. I spoke to him earlier and he said he was looking for more of a training role close to home, though he knows he’ll have to go into the field from time to time.’
Gray watched the men go through their drill, loading the magazines before stowing the weapons in their leather holsters.
‘Ready!’ Sonny shouted.
After a few seconds, he flicked a switch, and the targets spun ninety degrees, giving the shooters a face-on aspect. Weapons were drawn, and the shed erupted with simultaneous gunfire.
‘Reset!’
The targets disappeared, and the handguns were stowed.
After four more iterations, Sonny went from man to man to ensure the pistols were empty. Satisfied that all rounds had been discharged, he walked the men downrange to inspect the targets.
The shooting had been of a very high standard. One or two rounds were a little high or wide, but as they were using the guns for the first time, it was to be expected.
Mackenzie’s grouping was particularly impressive, with all ten shots clustered within two inches.
‘Considering the distance, that’s some damn fine shooting,’ Sonny told the group. ‘Okay, guys, there are cleaning kits in the box. Strip and oil the weapons, please.’
Sonny walked back over to Gray. ‘Score another point for Mackenzie.’
Gray nodded. ‘He’ll fit the Benin contract nicely. If he balks at that, we’ll look for something closer to home. Send all the reports over to Len and copy me in when you’re done, please.’
Gray left Sonny to continue the rest of the session, keen to get back to the car to see how Melissa was faring. His daughter seemed none the worse for the time alone. Gray unlocked the door to find her making gurgling noises to the toy sheep, and she gave him only a brief glance as he climbed behind the wheel.
‘Nice to know you missed me,’ he cooed, and Melissa offered him the goo-covered toy as a consolation.
‘No thanks, sweetheart. Let’s go see the doctor.’
Gray pulled away, pointing the car towards the hospital. The monthly check-ups hadn’t detected any problems so far; hopefully today’s would prove no different.
Chapter 7
9 July 2014
‘Pardon my French, Veronica, but this is bollocks!’
Andrew Harvey was sitting in Ellis’s office, and the news that he was being replaced as section lead had come out of the blue.
‘I know, but my hands are tied. The orders came from the home secretary herself.’
‘Since when was it her job to micro-manage the security services?’ Harvey stood and thrust his hands into his pockets as he paced the room.
‘It isn’t,’ Ellis agreed, ‘but since the story broke about James Farrar absconding, she’s decided to take an active role in finding out what went wrong.’
‘What went wrong was that six months ago, one of her judges decided to grant him bail,’ Harvey seethed.
‘Apparently, he acted within the framework of the law. Besides, she claimed this isn’t just about Farrar. The lack of progress on DSA’s new leader was another point she raised, as well as the terror suspect who vanished while dressed as a woman.’
Harvey began counting off on his fingers. ‘Farrar couldn’t be found because we needed help from external agencies, which we weren’t allowed to contact under any circumstances. DSA’s new leader has been seen by just a handful of people in its upper council, and no council members are stupid enough to let intel about their beloved Takasa slip our way. And the terror suspect who fled was being monitored by a third-party private security firm, and they had orders to contact the Home Office, who then contacted the police, who then arrived too late to find him. It was their internal procedure that let him get away, not anything we did.’
‘I hear you on all counts,’ Ellis said, ‘and I raised these arguments myself, but she isn’t interested in anything but results.’
She pointed to the chair, and Harvey reluctantly took a seat.
‘Andrew, you know as well as I do that this close to election time, the politicians need to be seen in a favourable light. The last thing they need is an embarrassment that could trip them up on their way to the polls.’
Harvey was well aware of the way things played out when people were preparing to choose their new leaders: broken promises were swept under the carpet as new ones were offered to a believing public; figures were massaged—or ‘seasonally adjusted’—to make their time in office seem a success; and bad news was suppressed or played down until the hustings were over.
That didn’t make his demotion any easier to swallow.
‘So who takes over from me?’
‘The home secretary is sending someone from Six,’ Ellis said. ‘Farrar used to work for them, so she thinks having them take the lead will produce results.’
Great. Harvey had had only a few dealings with his counterparts in MI6, and none of them had turned out well. Working under one of them wasn’t going to be a cakewalk, that was for sure.
‘I’m sure this is only temporary,’ Ellis assured him. ‘Once we have Farrar and the lowdown on Takasa, we won’t need their . . . assistance.’
‘And I regain my position?’ Harvey pressed.
The question made Ellis squirm, confirming Harvey’s suspicions.
‘That remains to be seen,’ she said. ‘The home secretary will want a report from me as well as from your replacement. If you shine, the slot should be yours again.’
Harvey knew there wasn’t much he could do except swallow his pride and get on with the job, which should be easier now that Farrar’s disappearance had hit the headlines. He could now bring Interpol and other foreign agencies into the search, which would speed things along.
‘When does he get here? My replacement?’
‘Sarah will be here this afternoon,’ Ellis said. ‘If you could have your office cleared by lunchtime, that would be great.’
Harvey nodded and rose to leave. ‘I assume we’re okay to get the ball rolling on Farrar,’ he said, as he headed for the door.
‘No, just wait until Sarah gets here and let her co-ordinate things.’
‘Sure. No problem.’
Harvey went back to his office and began clearing out his drawers. He took his time, trying to gather his emotions before having to face his colleagues. He was sure they’d sympathise, but he wanted to share the news with a level head, rather than reveal the anger that was gnawing at his insides.
Finally calm, he removed his laptop from the docking station and carried it out of the office, finding an empty desk to call home.
As he turned to address his team—former team, he reminded himself—he took small consolation from being rid of the stifling office and back in the thick of things.
Chapter 8
15 July 2014
Paul Roberts walked up to the immigration desk at Heathrow, wearing the same jeans and T-
shirt he’d used on the outward journey five months earlier. This time they were pressed and clean, and the man wearing them hardly resembled the scruffy thirty-four-year-old who’d left the country in the early spring.
His hair, which had once fallen over his ears and down to the nape of his neck, was now cut in a neat side parting, and the sun had bleached it a lighter shade of brown.
‘I’ve been on a voyage of self-discovery,’ Roberts said to the immigration officer, who was clearly having a hard time matching the man in front of him with the passport he was holding.
With a grunt and a stamp, he allowed Roberts on his way. After visiting the foreign exchange booth to convert five hundred dollars into sterling, Roberts followed the signs for the Tube. Once seated and pointing towards the centre of London, he went through the counter-surveillance exercises he’d been taught. He pretended to be engrossed in a newspaper, but every time the train slowed, he looked up and scanned the carriage on the pretence of checking which station he was approaching.
None of his fellow passengers seemed interested in him, but just to be sure, he alighted at South Kensington and switched to the Circle line, which he followed to Notting Hill Gate. Here he transferred to the Central line, but by the time he got to the final switch, at Bank station, he’d seen nothing to arouse his suspicions.
Confident that he wasn’t being tailed, Roberts took the Northern line to Oval, where he started looking for a bed and breakfast establishment that could accommodate him for a few nights. He found a place that was off the beaten track and paid for three nights in advance.
The room was sparse, with a small TV and basic coffee and tea-making equipment. The bathroom was functional, if in need of a good clean, though it was luxurious compared to the facilities in Africa.
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