The Kill Zone

by Chris Ryan

  ‘Stenton.’ Her voice was abrupt. Unfriendly almost.

  ‘Afternoon, Professor.’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘A friend of yours from Helmand.’

  A pause. When Caroline spoke again, her voice had softened.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Hereford,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Hereford? You’re home rather sooner than I expected.’ She was almost purring now, and Jack could tell it had been a good idea to call.

  ‘When did you expect me home?’ he asked.

  Caroline ignored the question. ‘If this is about what happened in Helmand, Jack, you have to know that I can’t talk about it.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with that.’

  ‘Then I can’t imagine why you’re calling.’

  ‘You can’t?’

  ‘Well . . .’ He could imagine a faint smile on her face. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Where are you?’ Jack asked.

  ‘At home,’ she replied. ‘London. Kensington.’

  ‘Any plans for tonight?’

  ‘Nothing I can’t put off . . .’

  It took ten minutes for Jack to shower, change and jump into the BMW convertible on which he lavished a lot more care than he did the flat. He burned through the streets of Hereford, heading towards Gloucester where he could get on the dual carriageway to the M4.

  At the back of his brain there was the nagging worry that the adjutant was going to give him his marching orders. He didn’t let it worry him for long. Fuck them all, he said under his breath as the speedo tipped ninety. They might be preparing to shit on him but someone, somewhere wasn’t telling him the truth. Who knew if he’d ever get to the bottom of it, but if they thought he was going to sit quiet and take it, they had another thing coming.

  It was a little after 7 p.m. by the time he reached London and rang the doorbell of the address Caroline had given him. It was a large townhouse on the north side of Kensington High Street, divided into four flats, with Caroline occupying the penthouse. There was no reply over the intercom; just a buzz. Jack pushed the main door open and strode up to the top floor. The door to Caroline’s apartment was ajar. He stepped inside.

  It was a large flat, softly lit. Chopin tinkled inoffensively in the background – not Jack’s kind of thing, but he wasn’t here for the music – and the air was thick with the scent of incense. There were several doors off the square main hallway, but only one of them was open. Jack headed towards it. He found himself looking into a large, comfortable room, breathing in the faint aroma of menthol cigarettes. At the far end, floor-to-ceiling windows were covered by thick, embroidered curtains. Even though it was summer, a fire flickered in the grate and there were two long, comfortable-looking sofas strewn with pillows.

  And on one of the sofas sat Caroline.

  She looked a hell of a sight different to the last time Jack had seen her.

  The professor wore a dress, though there wasn’t much to it – a couple of flimsy shoulder straps and a whisper of thin material that stopped just above her knees and did little to disguise the curves of her body. Her feet were tucked underneath her, and she had a glass of champagne in her hand. The remainder of the bottle and a second glass were on a low table in front of her. Her eyes glowed with the reflection of the fire as she looked at Jack, and she took a slow sip of her drink before saying anything.

  ‘A long way from Hereford, Captain Harker. But I thought you’d be here sooner.’

  Jack shrugged. He stepped up to the low table and poured himself a drink which he swallowed down in two gulps. The booze – the first he’d had for months – oozed warmly through his body. It felt good.

  ‘Didn’t want to rush you,’ he smiled as he topped up her glass and refilled his own.

  ‘No,’ Caroline replied. ‘I’m not to be rushed. I like to take things slowly.’ She smiled. ‘So it’s a good job we’ve got all night, isn’t it?’

  Jack sat down beside her, then stretched out his free hand and stroked his fingertips down her auburn hair. She smiled, put down her glass and shuffled closer to him. Their lips met, and Jack felt her hand slide inside his shirt, popping one of the buttons as it went. She ran her hand up and down his torso then suddenly, to his surprise, dug her long fingernails into his skin. He jumped, but she kept her lips pressed firmly against his.

  Caroline pushed her body closer towards his. Jack let his champagne glass fall to the floor, then slowly slid the straps of her dress down the side of her soft shoulders. She was naked underneath the dress, which settled round her slim waist. Caroline pulled her lips away from his, and as she stood up, the dress slid further down her long legs, tumbling to a silent heap on the floor. She stepped out of it, raised one eyebrow meaningfully at Jack and walked slowly from the room.

  Jack allowed himself to enjoy the sight before standing up himself and following her. By the time he was in her bedroom, she was already lying on the bed, with just the light of the moon through the window illuminating her body. Jack could hear her breathing – regular and heavy – and in the darkness of the room he smiled.

  Caroline Stenton was a lead, nothing more. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the process of following her up.

  Jack looked at his watch. 4 a.m. They had long since exhausted themselves. Now he lay there, listening to Caroline’s slow, regular breathing. The moon had moved. Its light no longer filtered into the room. It was very dark.

  He slowly slid the covers from his body and eased himself out of bed. As he stepped towards the door he used the edge of his vision – more sensitive to what light there was – to see his way. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but if he was going to nose around Caroline’s flat, now was the time to do it.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  Her voice was sharp. Not at all drowsy. He turned round to see the vague silhouette of her body sitting up.

  ‘Bathroom,’ he said.

  When he returned, she was still awake. And as he lay down beside her, she turned to face him. She didn’t say a word, but he could sense that his bed partner had one eye open. And that it wouldn’t be closed till morning.

  He allowed sleep to take him.

  30 JUNE

  11

  When Jack woke up again, Caroline was no longer in the bed. She was fully dressed in an elegant trouser suit and was sitting at her dressing table, looking closely at the mirror as she applied her make-up. Jack looked at his watch. A quarter past six.

  ‘Bit early, isn’t it?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve got a meeting,’ she said. The abruptness had returned to her voice and all traces of the kittenish thing he’d spent the night with had disappeared. ‘I’ve called you a cab.’

  ‘I don’t need a cab.’

  ‘Then don’t take it. But you’d better get dressed. I’ve got to be out of here in ten minutes.’

  Jack shrugged. He got out of bed and pulled his jeans on while she finished her make-up and then turned to look at him. She looked as cute this morning as she had last night. He grabbed her hand and gave her a gentle pull towards the bed.

  ‘Forget it, Jack. I’m late and you’ve got to go. I mean it.’ She walked out of the room.

  Jack finished getting dressed, then followed her. She was in the kitchen – a room he hadn’t even seen yet – gulping down a glass of orange juice and eating a thin piece of toast. She didn’t offer him anything; she just squeezed past him and out into the hallway, where she opened the front door.

  ‘Bye bye, Jack,’ she said.

  ‘I’m beginning to think you don’t love me any more.’

  ‘Goodbye, Jack.’

  He shrugged. ‘We must do it again sometime,’ he murmured, before stepping out on to the landing and heading back down the stairs.

  His car was still parked out on the street, and tucked behind the front windscreen wiper was a parking ticket. He looked around at the parking restrictions. No parking before 11 p.m
. Fucking great. Jack pulled at the ticket and started to crumple it up to stuff in his pocket, but then he changed his mind. Flattening it out again, he replaced the ticket, then slipped to the end of the road where there was a bus shelter with three or four people queuing. He joined them, just another commuter. But while the others gazed in the direction from which they expected their bus to arrive, Jack kept his eyes firmly on the door of Caroline’s building.

  He didn’t have to wait long for a vehicle to arrive. It double-parked just by Jack’s own car, and a black-suited man got out and rang Caroline’s doorbell before returning to the vehicle. Moments later, Caroline appeared. She carried a slim leather briefcase and climbed swiftly into the back of the car, which slipped instantly away.

  Jack ran back towards his own BMW. In less than twenty seconds he had grabbed the ticket and was behind the wheel, pulling out into the road and following Caroline’s car. They turned left on to Kensington High Street and headed along Hyde Park before turning right down towards the river and into Millbank. Jack drove patiently, keeping two cars between himself and Caroline’s. But when her driver stopped outside Thames House, he drove straight past. Jack knew how not to be seen, and stopping at exactly the same place as the person he was trailing was a sure way of drawing attention to himself.

  And besides, the trail stopped here. He’d found out what he wanted to know, and there was no way he’d be able to follow Caroline into the building. As he drove away, he glanced in his rear-view mirror and could just see the slim, efficient figure of Professor Caroline Stenton striding directly into the offices of MI5.

  ‘Fucking Five,’ he muttered as he drove away.

  He tried to tie the strands together in his head. Caroline was clearly working for military intelligence in some capacity. What that capacity was, he didn’t know. What he did know was that someone in Helmand had known where they were, and as a result his men were dead. If Jack’s luck had been different, he’d have joined them.

  But would someone in the echelons of MI5 really want to dispense with eight Regiment men, plus flight crew? Would they really pass on intelligence about their location to a scumbag like Farzad Haq? Jack shook his head. It didn’t add up. At least not with any kind of maths that Jack knew.

  Maybe he’d got it all wrong. Maybe the ambush had just been a lucky break for the enemy. Maybe he was just seeing shadows.

  Jack Harker shook his head and performed a quick U-turn. A black cab skidded to an abrupt halt and the air was filled with the angry sound of blaring horns. Jack ignored them all as he directed his vehicle back out of town. It was time to go home.

  The members of the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre were waiting for Caroline. This morning’s meeting had been called for 7 a.m. and it was now three minutes past. Of the twenty or so members of the JTAC, a couple of them were looking impatiently at their watches while the others helped themselves to coffee and pastries. At the head of their large table sat the Director General of the Security Service. The JTAC wasn’t part of MI5, but it was answerable to him, so Jonathan Daniels was present for its more important meetings.

  Like this one.

  Caroline took the one remaining seat at the table, next to Colonel Bruce Sterne, a representative from the MoD – one of those grandfatherly types who had a knack of getting on with anyone. Sterne stood up, cleared his throat and the murmur of conversation in the room fell to silence.

  ‘Ladies and gentleman,’ he announced. ‘Now that we’re all here, I suggest we begin.’ He gave Caroline a benevolent smile. ‘Most of you already know Professor Stenton,’ he continued. ‘Her advice has, of course, been invaluable to us over the past couple of years. For those of you who haven’t yet had the pleasure, Professor Stenton is a fellow of University College London, and she specialises in the field of radiological warfare. As you are no doubt aware, there have been intelligence reports over the last few weeks of a potential terrorist threat to the UK, which is why the terrorism-threat-level status has recently been increased to critical. The source of this is understood to have been in Helmand Province, but I’m happy to announce that . . .’ He turned to look at Caroline again. ‘Well, perhaps Professor Stenton would like to take the floor.’

  Caroline stood up. ‘Thank you, Bruce,’ she said. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve recently returned from Helmand Province. While I was there I accompanied a team of British Army personnel on the ground where we discovered a facility capable of producing a high-level radiological weapon. The facility was neutralised, and a flight case of materials confiscated. We’ve now had the opportunity to analyse them.’

  There was absolute silence around the room as Caroline continued.

  ‘The case we removed contained a quantity of caesium-137. I’ll try and keep the science simple, but what you need to know is this: it’s highly toxic and has a half-life of just over thirty years. This makes it suitable for the production of a particularly devastating dirty bomb.’

  The Director General interrupted. ‘Let’s have some specifics, Professor Stenton. When you say “particularly devastating”, what exactly do you mean?’

  ‘It’s difficult to give an exact prediction. I would estimate that the quantity we confiscated would be sufficient to infect ten thousand people within a radius of about a mile. Of those, I would expect ten per cent fatalities within thirty days and fifty per cent within a year.’ She let that sink in before continuing. ‘Of the remainder, most of them would probably wish they were dead anyway. And with a thirty-year half-life, if somebody had successfully detonated such a bomb in a highly populated area, we would be feeling the aftershock for decades to come. Small quantities of caesium-137 were released into the atmosphere after the Chernobyl disaster, and we all know what sort of effect that had.’

  Another uncomfortable silence.

  Bruce Sterne stood up again. ‘Thank you, Caroline.’ He looked around the room. ‘I would like to state for the record, ladies and gentlemen, that a number of our special forces lost their lives in the process of capturing this material. Our debt to them, and to Professor Stenton, is greater than we perhaps realise.’ Sterne looked as if he was waiting for some acknowledgement of this statement, but none came. With a slight shrug, he turned directly towards the Director General. ‘There seems little doubt,’ he said, ‘that this is the terrorist threat of which our intelligence reports warned. Since it has been neutralised, I propose that we reduce the terrorism threat level from critical to severe.’

  He sat down once more. There was a little hum of conversation from the assembled members of the JTAC, and their faces were substantially paler than they had been at the beginning of the meeting – the expressions, perhaps, of people who felt they’d just had a lucky escape. The Director General spoke up. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he announced. ‘I’m sure you’ll all join me in thanking Professor Stenton for her work.’

  The nodding of heads.

  ‘Now that this threat has been dealt with,’ Daniels continued, ‘I see no reason not to downgrade the threat level. Perhaps I could have a show of hands for any of us who disagrees with this course of action.’

  There were no raised hands. The members of the JTAC were all political creatures, and they knew as well as anyone how much easier a downgrading of the threat level would make their own lives.

  ‘Good,’ the DG said, his voice brisk. ‘Then unless there’s anything else, I’ll inform the PM immediately.’ He gathered the papers laid out on the table in front of him, gave a nod to the assembled company, and quickly left the room.

  Back in the day, when Siobhan was being trained up in the Det, she’d had an instructor. He was a foul-mouthed bastard who for some reason had managed to sleep his way through at least half the females under his tutelage, and he never made it a secret that he’d like Siobhan to be another notch on his bedpost. She never succumbed, not only because the guy made her flesh creep, but also because it was in the early days with Jack, and her boyfriend would have nailed the instructor’s bollocks to the floor if
he thought he was messing with Siobhan. That was what Jack was like.

  Still, say what you like about the instructor, he knew his stuff. Siobhan was more than happy to put up with his lechery if it meant she learned something. That was what she was like.

  Siobhan found herself thinking of that instructor now. ‘Surveillance,’ he had told her, ‘is boring. Fucking boring. But boredom’s your biggest enemy. You get bored, you get careless. You get careless . . .’ He’d made a gun shape with two fingers and thumb, then mimed shooting himself in the head. ‘And it would be a shame to be scraping your pretty little face off the pavement.’

  Siobhan had never forgotten that. Since her days training in Hereford, she’d spent countless hours performing covert surveillance and she knew every trick in the book. Which was why she now found herself crouched in the boot of her old Volvo estate – a vehicle selected for no other reason than that it was perfect for a boot fit like this, with the back seats up and the space covered. Enough space for her to stay hidden, for her stash of different styles of clothes to help her blend in to whichever neighbourhood she was staking out, and for the briefcase opened up beside her, which contained a small radio receiver, a loudspeaker and a mess of wires like colourful spaghetti. Her torch was off, but light seeped in to the boot from the two peepholes that she had drilled into the number plate. At the end of the Troubles, the IRA had grown cute to boot fits like this and had started blowing up vehicles they only suspected of containing surveillance operatives. But those days were gone, which meant some of the old techniques could come back into play.

  As she entered the fourth hour of surveillance outside the Horse and Three Feathers, she kept the instructor’s words firmly in her mind. Under ordinary circumstances she’d have a partner, someone to share the duty with. But these circumstances weren’t ordinary. Kieran’s tip-off of a Drugs Squad police officer on Cormac’s payroll meant she couldn’t trust anybody on the force. Even if she could, she wouldn’t. She knew what they thought of her – that life for her was just some long personal vendetta against the types who put Lily on the wrong path in the first place.