Run for Home

by Dan Latus

  Log fires and wood-burning stoves were good, though, he thought with a wry smile. So Lisa and Ellie should be all right. The Running Man had mountains of firewood standing in the yard behind the main building. Enough to last a lifetime.

  He yawned and switched off the television. Time to think about going to his meeting. Time to make sure he knew what he wanted to ask and to say. Time to find a way of putting an end to this nonsense, and to let Lisa and himself get on with their lives.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  For once, they met face-to-face. Jackson found that better. He was tired of being the go-between. Murphy could hear it direct this time.

  The boss was not in a good mood. No change there. But this time they didn’t have to bear the brunt of his displeasure.

  ‘This guy – Klaus – told you nothing?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. He admitted Gibson had been there. He just didn’t tell us where he is now. Couldn’t, I mean. He didn’t know.’

  ‘So we popped him,’ Murphy contributed. ‘No point leaving him to tell the world about us.’

  Jackson winced as he saw the way the boss looked at Murphy.

  ‘There was a risk,’ Jackson intervened. ‘We didn’t want him identifying us.’

  The boss was happier with that. A civilized man, the boss.

  ‘Quite so,’ he said.

  Jackson hurried on. ‘So we still don’t know where he is. We don’t even know if he’s in the country.’

  The boss frowned. ‘Time is running out, gentlemen. We need to find him, and fast. Otherwise, all this will have been for nothing. We’ll have nothing to show for our labours.’

  Murphy seemed about make a contribution. Jackson silenced him with a fierce glare.

  ‘You know where to go next, don’t you?’ the boss said. ‘There is at least one person who must have a very good idea where he is.’

  Jackson nodded. ‘She’ll know where they both are.’

  ‘Right, gentlemen,’ the boss said, getting to his feet. ‘I’ll leave it to you.’

  They sat still for a few moments after he had left the room. Jackson listened hard, but couldn’t hear a whisper as the man made his exit.

  ‘Gentlemen?’ Murphy murmured. ‘Is that what we are now?’

  Jackson grinned. ‘We’d better get to work,’ he said. ‘Justify his good opinion of us.’

  ‘It’s nice to have something to do,’ Murphy countered. ‘Makes it all seem worthwhile.’

  Jackson relaxed. His partner was in a good mood. When they got their hands on the money, he would be in an even better mood.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Lenka phoned.

  ‘I don’t like the location, Harry.’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Too many ways in and out. You would be very vulnerable. I don’t think you should go. There are safer places to meet than that.’

  He thought quickly. It was unfortunate, but he trusted Lenka’s judgement.

  ‘I still need to know who this guy is,’ he pointed out.

  ‘I can go. They don’t know me.’

  That made sense. Let Lenka see who turned up. Find out who he was dealing with.

  ‘OK. But be careful!’

  He stayed where he was. There was time to kill now. So he switched the television back on, just in time to catch the end of yet another news bulletin dealing with weather-induced catastrophe. Rather, with the political fallout.

  Now Germany was displaying concern with the situation in Ukraine. There must be no repeat, Chancellor Merkel warned, of the breakdown in relations that several years ago had led to unnecessary deaths in Romania, Slovakia and elsewhere. If the security of Russian gas supplies could not be guaranteed, then purchasing countries would need to think again about where they went for their supplies, and what kind of energy to use.

  He switched off. The same old thing; Russia had the gas, the rest of Europe wanted it badly. But it was hard to see what the point was of negotiations in Prague between Russia and the UK. Britain was a European sideshow, even if it did like to think of itself as a top-table member.

  He shook his head and glanced at his watch. He was on edge. Lenka must be there now. He hoped she would appear to be just another diner in the restaurant. There was no reason for anyone to single her out if she was careful. She would be careful, of course, but still it was worrying.

  She returned just after ten.

  ‘There were three of them,’ she said tersely. ‘Jackson, Murphy and, presumably, your contact.’

  ‘Christ! Jackson and Murphy again? Where were they?’

  ‘The contact came inside, sat down and ordered a drink. The other two stayed outside in a car.’

  He nodded and swore softly. It was no different, then. They were still trying to eliminate him. Nothing had changed. How could he ever have thought it might have?

  Lenka started fiddling with her phone. He paced up and down the room, working out what to do next.

  ‘The meetings at the embassy are still going on,’ Lenka said, studying her phone. ‘The Brits and the Russians.’

  He nodded but he didn’t care. It was nothing to do with him now. He had other things on his mind.

  ‘Oh, that’s interesting!’

  He looked round.

  ‘I took a photo of your contact in the restaurant. I didn’t recognize him but I sent it to a colleague. He says the man has just entered the British Embassy.’

  She looked up.

  He shrugged. ‘We knew he was connected there.’

  ‘Yes, but how?’

  A potential answer came to him. ‘Possibly through the gas deal. He has to be able to tell the Russians that Unit 89 has been totally eliminated before they agree to send more gas – by tanker, presumably.’

  ‘You really think that?’

  ‘I do. The UK is desperate. The cold weather will be using up all the reserves and, like we said before, the Russians drive a hard bargain. They’ll want something, as well as money, in return – all sorts of things, probably.’

  ‘And the scalps of you and the rest of your unit might be one of them?’

  ‘It’s a reasonable proposition. In a national emergency, individuals become expendable, especially people who don’t officially exist anyway.’

  Lenka shrugged again and yawned. ‘It’s possible, I suppose.’

  ‘Damn right it is!’

  He picked up the phone and rang the number again.

  ‘It’s Mr Black.’

  ‘Ah! Where were you, Mr Black? You didn’t come.’

  ‘You weren’t alone. You brought to the meeting the very people who have been trying to kill me. Not good enough, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Perhaps we can make another arrangement?’

  No attempt to deny anything.

  ‘Perhaps we can. This time I will tell you where we meet. And, boy, you’d better come alone!’

  According to tradecraft convention, a meeting like this had to be somewhere safe and secure. A quiet venue, in other words, where threats could be spotted and evaded.

  That was the theory. But, instead, Harry nominated a small café in the Lucerne complex just off Wenceslas Square. It was in the heart of a maze of internal shopping arcades built a century ago by the late President Havel’s family, Havel himself in his years as a dissident being no stranger to subterfuge, clandestine meetings and the need for avenues of escape.

  ‘I know it well,’ Harry said after he had ended the phone call. ‘There are plenty of ways out of it if things go badly.’

  Lenka smiled. ‘You could even escape from the balcony where Havel showed Dubček to the crowds in Wenceslas Square, back in 1989.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that be something?’

  All that was back then, when Czechoslovakia still existed, Communists governed and the Soviet Union called the shots.

  ‘I will bring a colleague,’ Lenka added, ‘and we’ll watch the approaches to the café. We don’t want your friends Jackson and Murphy turning up again u
ninvited.’

  He nodded. ‘Thanks. If things don’t go well, I’ll make my exit through the kitchen and out into the music shop in the next arcade.’

  ‘It sounds like you’ve done that before?’

  ‘Once or twice,’ he admitted with a smile.

  Simon Mayhew sat waiting for him.

  Harry was astonished. Suppressing his surprise, he glanced around before making his approach. Mayhew seemed to be alone.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting you to be here,’ he said as he sat down.

  ‘Get used to it. I’m here.’

  Harry caught the eye of a waiter, who promptly came over. He ordered a beer and glanced at Mayhew, who shook his head and pointed to his coffee cup.

  Once the waiter had left them, Mayhew said, ‘So what do you want, Gibson? You’ve caused us enough trouble already.’

  The niceties were over, it seemed. Harry shook his head in disbelief, and with irritation. ‘And you such a busy man?’ he suggested.

  Mayhew was not amused. ‘We are short-handed at present, as it happens. Otherwise it certainly wouldn’t be me sitting here. Now, what do you want?’

  He had wondered about that, about why Mayhew had turned up. Budget cuts must be biting deep.

  ‘All hands on deck when it comes to talking to the Russians, eh? I don’t blame you.’

  Mayhew didn’t give anything away. He simply stared, his face without expression.

  ‘You and I met once before,’ Harry reminded him. ‘Many years ago.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘I thought then you were an arrogant, unpleasant bastard. Nothing’s happened to change my mind.’

  The waiter arrived with the beer.

  Mayhew waited until he had departed. Then he leaned forward and said, ‘Don’t waste my time. Our country is in difficulties, and I have a lot to do without you creating more trouble.’

  ‘Me, creating trouble?’ Harry shook his head and sighed with frustration. ‘All I want to know is why you’ve been trying to kill me, and when it will stop. That straightforward enough for you?’

  There was a long silence before Mayhew responded. ‘Are you quite well, Gibson?’

  ‘Well enough, thank you. What about my questions?’

  ‘Absolute rubbish, as you well know.’

  Mayhew glanced at his watch and shuffled in his seat, about to stand up.

  ‘Then why did I mount the attack on the car?’

  ‘So it was you?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Look, Gibson. What do you want?’

  ‘I’ve told you. I want to know why you’ve been trying to kill me.’

  ‘That’s fantasy, total fantasy. What on earth is wrong with you?’ Mayhew asked, staring at him hard.

  ‘Fantasy, is it? Then tell me what happened to the rest of Unit 89 – and to Callerton, the man who created it in the first place. Tell me that!’

  ‘The Callerton part is easy. I happen to know that Callerton is living happily in retirement in the Lake District.’

  Harry shook his head impatiently. ‘Not when I saw him last, he wasn’t. Someone had just shot him. Half his head had been blown off.’

  ‘Rubbish!’

  ‘Look, I’m sick and tired of all this. I’ve had enough. It goes against my instincts but I’m prepared to make a deal with you. I won’t go public if you call off the dogs.’

  ‘Dogs? There aren’t any!’

  Harry shook his head impatiently and pressed on. ‘I know you’re trying to do a gas deal with the Russians. The country needs energy, and it’s difficult for you. I understand that. But sacrificing your own people in order to achieve a deal with the Russians is going too far. What I want. …’

  Mayhew held up a hand to stop him. ‘I realize,’ he said in a softer tone, ‘that you must have been under a lot of strain. I can understand that. It’s a lonely job, out here. You need help. Take extended leave, and we’ll arrange some for you. But we are meeting now because you attacked an Embassy car. Remember? I came here tonight to find out why.’

  ‘Because the people in it had kidnapped my daughter.’

  ‘Nonsense!’

  Mayhew shook his head. He seemed genuinely exasperated.

  ‘It’s true,’ Harry insisted doggedly. ‘The men driving it, Jackson and Murphy, have been pursuing me for a couple of weeks – from Prague to Orkney, and back again.

  ‘They kidnapped my daughter to bring me out in the open. She was in the car at the time I stopped it. I rescued her. Didn’t you see any of that in the news? They took her from her grandmother’s house, here in Prague, and set up a meeting with me that wasn’t going to end well for either of us. I pre-empted them, and rescued my daughter. Now I want to bring all this to an end. So how about it?’

  The fingers of Mayhew’s left hand had begun to tap out a fast rhythm on the tabletop. Harry watched them, and waited.

  ‘Who did you say was driving the car?’

  ‘Jackson and Murphy, two cleaners. Sorry. The atmosphere where you live may be too rarefied for you to be aware of such creatures.’

  Mayhew shook his head impatiently. ‘My information is that the car was in the hands of someone else, someone far more important than the likes of Jackson and Murphy.’

  ‘Who?’

  Mayhew waved the question aside. He wasn’t prepared to say.

  ‘Then you’d better do some checking,’ Harry said grimly, ‘because I’m telling you now you’ve got it wrong. If you don’t believe me, check with the Prague police.’

  He could tell that something he had said had got Mayhew thinking. The mood of the meeting had changed.

  ‘I’m a busy man, Gibson. We’re all busy. The UK needs more Russian gas, and you’re right in thinking there are negotiations going on at the moment about that. But that’s nothing to do with me. I’m here for another reason. And I’m the one talking to you now because the person who ought to have met you is not available.’

  ‘Oh? And who might that be?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  Harry shook his head wearily. ‘Well, find time to check what’s been going on, Mayhew, and do it yourself. You’re from the UK, from outside. Things are not right here, in Prague. So check the facts, and then tell me I’m wrong.’

  ‘If you think. …’

  ‘My mobile will be switched off. I’m taking no chances. But I’ll call you in the morning.

  ‘I’m telling you now, though, that if this vendetta doesn’t stop I’m going public with what’s been happening, and with what I know. I’ll disclose everything, and I’ll do it where it will do most damage.’

  ‘Don’t threaten me, Gibson.’

  ‘Just do it,’ Harry said grimly. ‘I mean what I say.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  He sensed a difference when he phoned Mayhew the next morning, and he guessed the man had done some investigating.

  ‘Meet me this morning at ten,’ Mayhew said crisply. ‘The same place?’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  He switched off the phone, looked at Lenka and shrugged. ‘He wants to meet again. I think he’s discovered something.’

  ‘Let’s hope so – and let’s hope it makes a difference.’ She yawned and added, ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She nodded.

  ‘What about Stefan?’

  ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder, doesn’t it?’ she said with a wry smile. ‘He’s not here at the moment.’

  He grinned and turned away to get ready.

  Mayhew took on a different tone at the meeting, treating Harry like a human being and even a valued colleague instead of a deranged alien. He looked tired as well, as if he had been up all night.

  ‘I’ve done some checking,’ he announced as soon as their coffee had been delivered. ‘It’s not been easy overnight. And, as you know, this isn’t my patch. But what you told me seems to stand up.’

  Harry nodded and took a sip of coffee. ‘So what have you discovered?’


  Mayhew frowned, as if to discourage questions. Then he sighed. ‘Sadly, Callerton is dead, as you told me. He was murdered. And some of the other things you told me I have also been able to corroborate.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Harry said with a grimace. ‘I liked Callerton. I liked him a lot. I also had great respect for him.’

  Mayhew nodded. ‘He thought well of you, too. He made that clear in his appraisals.’

  ‘What else have you learned?’

  ‘Another body was found at the murder scene. Initially, the working hypothesis was that you had shot them both.

  ‘Then it was found that the bullets had come from different guns, and that the gun found at the scene was the one used to kill Callerton. It had on it the prints of the dead man.

  ‘After that, other things fell into place, all leading to the conclusion that the man who had murdered Callerton had himself then been killed by a third party.’

  Mayhew gave him a keen look and added, ‘You got there too late, I take it?’

  ‘Just. A few minutes might have made a difference.’ Harry shrugged and added, ‘The killer was still in the house, waiting for me. Was he one of yours?’

  ‘Well … let’s just say he was known to us.’

  Yes, let’s! Harry thought. Then he reminded himself to treat what Mayhew was telling him with caution and suspicion. Just because he wanted him to have changed sides didn’t mean that he actually had.

  ‘What about Unit 89?’

  Mayhew sighed. ‘I’ve checked back with London. There is growing concern there. They say they can’t make contact. Probably nothing, they say, but. …’

  ‘That’s because Landis is dead, and he was the contact point.’