All four men were dressed casually, jeans and sweaters. All were armed to the teeth. Thank God, they hadn’t found Jimmy, Tallis thought. It was him they had come for, him they wanted.
‘You’ve made the biggest mistake of your life,’ Tallis said, uncompromising.
‘My line, buddy,’ Koroglu snarled back.
Close up, he was even more imposing. Solid-jawed, dark-skinned, porous-looking, he had a distinctly military bearing. The fair-haired guy seemed more of a thinker. Either that, or he was junior to Koroglu, which, come to think of it, Tallis realised, fitted the profile better.
‘You’ve got the wrong man,’ Tallis insisted.
‘So you keep saying.’
‘It’s true.’ He was looking out of the window, wondering where they were taking him. They were heading south down the M5. Baffling.
‘For Chrissakes, you don’t know what you’re doing. There’s a bomb in Birmingham. I’ve got to warn the authorities.’
‘We are the authorities.’ The fair-haired guy gave a low dry chuckle.
‘Not in this country,’ Tallis spat back, teeth grinding.
‘Be surprised, pal.’
Tallis turned and gave him a withering look.
‘This the bomb you set up?’ Koroglu drawled.
‘I’m not a terrorist.’
‘Save it for the judge,’ the fair-haired guy interposed again.
‘Where’s your evidence to charge me?’ Tallis rounded on him.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ Koroglu said. ‘We’ve got plenty of dirt. We pay special attention to those who consort with individuals on our watch list.’
They meant Tardarti. ‘I didn’t cons—’
‘You work for Johnny Kennedy, Mr Miller, or should I call you Paul?’
‘Or Milton?’ the fair-haired guy chipped in, derisive.
So the Turks had definitely been in the pockets of the Americans, Tallis thought. A cold metallic shiver rippled up his spine. He bet they’d also been right about Kennedy inciting the crime lords to terrorism. Undaunted, he stuck to his defence.
‘Johnny Kennedy, for your information, is under the protection of MI5.’
Nobody spoke. The silence cut him.
‘An organisation I work for.’ Tallis didn’t want to confess to it, but this was getting serious.
‘We know that, too,’ Koroglu said, dismissive. ‘They told us.’
‘What?’ He was stunned.
‘Asim vouched for you, Paul.’
Did he? Tallis thought. Surely that was a good thing? He said as much.
‘Asim confirmed you were working alongside Kennedy,’ Koroglu said testily, in the manner of a politician sticking stubbornly to his script, no deviation.
‘And MI5,’ Tallis insisted.
‘Not what Asim told us,’ the fair-haired guy cut in again. Tallis stared at him. There’d been one hell of a mix-up.
‘You’ve got the wrong idea. Kennedy is assisting MI5.’
Except he wasn’t, Tallis now knew. The only organisation Kennedy was assisting was his own, and Tallis had neither the time nor the confidence to try and convince the Americans. They wouldn’t believe him anyway. ‘I’m working for the security services,’ he insisted.
Again, nobody said anything. Christ, Tallis thought, Asim always maintained that he was working off the books, in a grey, unofficial capacity. But, surely, on this occasion, Asim had to come to his defence? Surely he wouldn’t throw him to the other side and deny his existence? What would be the purpose? Then Tallis remembered the fragility of the relationship between the British and the Americans, the lack of trust, the need to build a new accord. What was it Asim had said? Something that needs to be restored, and quickly. Tallis also remembered how expendable he was. He was nothing more than a freelancer and as such outside the rules of the game. He felt a wave of despair rise up from deep in his soul. Asim’s betrayal wasn’t true, couldn’t be.
‘We’ve seen your file,’ Koroglu added smugly.
No, no, no. He felt as if he was spiralling into madness. His file was confidential. They couldn’t have unless—he spiked inside—it was all bluff. ‘You’re CIA, aren’t you?’
‘The one and only,’ the fair-haired guy replied. Tallis fell silent. He tried not to think the worst, yet couldn’t help it. He’d been let go, sold out, whatever you wanted to call it.
‘If you’ve seen my file, you’ll know that what I say is true, that I want to prevent terrorism.’
Silence again.
Tallis stared down at his hands. Because of the cast on his wrist, they were free, mobile. Could he escape? But where would he go? And for what? ‘Where are you taking me?’ He tried hard to keep the desperation from his voice.
‘You’ll find out soon enough.’
The rest of the journey passed in a maze of confusion coupled with the very real terror that while MI5 and the police were tied up with Ahmed, Kennedy’s plan would come to fruition.
Tallis made one more attempt to reason with them. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Forget about me, but you have to speak to Asim. You have to tell him that Kennedy is planning something big.’
‘Thought you said he was assisting MI5,’ Koroglu said, sarcastic.
‘He was, but he has another agenda.’ Tallis winced, realising that he was making things a whole lot worse for himself.
‘So you are involved?’ The fair-haired guy sneered.
‘No, I—’
‘When?’ Koroglu barked.
‘I don’t know exactly.’
‘Where?’
‘Not sure.’ The Mailbox, the train station, the Bullring had all been brought to MI5’s attention. It had to be somewhere else.
Koroglu leaned forward, exchanged a look with the fair-haired guy, who shrugged. They weren’t buying it, Tallis thought bleakly. They think I’m trying to deal.
They turned off towards Gloucester, bypassing the town and heading for open countryside, the sound of small aircraft noisy overhead. At last they came to a road with a wire mesh fence running alongside it. Notices announced that guard dogs regularly patrolled the place. CCTV cameras were in evidence.
Then it suddenly dawned on Tallis. They were heading for the longest runway in the United Kingdom: Fairfield. A defence facility, under threat of closure, it was reputed that the Queen often used the base for flying into the country. It was also alleged that the formidable Galaxy aircraft, a plane so enormous that it could transport another secret plane inside its hold, made frequent visits there. Tallis immediately thought of hoods, blindfolds, men wearing balaclavas, water torture. No doubt about it, they were going to spirit him out of the country.
After a short distance, they pulled off and stopped at a checkpoint. The guards—Ministry of Defence, Tallis reckoned from their uniforms—were armed with MP5s. They looked like they meant business. It occurred to him to try and get their attention but he swiftly realised that he wouldn’t be believed. What was one man’s testimony against the evidence of several? Koroglu handed over his pass and, after a brief exchange, was waved on through. Tallis craned forward slightly and saw ahead several large buildings, including aircraft hangars and a series of oddlooking domes. It was only hearsay, but he’d heard that they were used for secret testing, of what he wasn’t certain.
The further they drove, the more obvious it was that the personnel were American. A number of skid cars were bumming around the area, the occupants creating mayhem out of boredom. The way those kids were driving the vehicles meant that they felt completely secure and safe, Tallis thought, spotting several military-looking bods strutting around the complex as if they owned it. This was good, Tallis thought. Arrogant people were often lazy in their thinking. Believing themselves to be invincible, they were more vulnerable to the element of surprise.
He was driven to one of the smaller buildings, manhandled out of the car where he was cuffed again with the more complicated kind of ancient-looking steel restraints he’d once seen in the police museum at Sparkhill, an
d pushed inside, the solid metal door swinging shut behind him. He heard the sounds of bolts being shot, locks turning. He was standing in what looked to be a hangar. There were no windows, a skylight in the roof the only source of illumination. Walls, twenty metres in length, were made of reinforced corrugated iron. He paced the dirt floor, looking for an escape route. Other than tunnelling with his bare hands, there was none. Might as well be buried back in his cell in the Basilica, he thought, laughter cold and bitter bursting out of him, ricocheting off the dull mercurycoloured walls. And if he did escape, what then?
He sat down, stretched out his legs, leaning against the solid metal. He imagined that they would come for him later, cram him into a Cessna, one of those specially adapted aircraft that flew quietly without alerting people on the ground. From there it would be a brief hop to a neighbouring country then a long-haul flight to who knew where. All he could do was wait and hope for rescue. From whom, he didn’t know. In the meantime, he decided to rest and closed his eyes. His thoughts returned to Mephisto and the names on the list in the computer file. He hadn’t really had time to process them until now. The names were all British. Not one suggested a heritage that was remotely foreign. So who were they? Blokes who’d worked for Kennedy, perhaps, were willing to work for him or, more chillingly, people who were capable of designing and planting a bomb?
Must have drifted off to sleep. He woke with a start. Daylight had completely faded from the sky, replaced by the fake illumination of a circling searchlight. The temperature in the building had plummeted, the barren earth on which he lay cold and damp. That’s when he caught sight of two items on the ground—a piece of crumpled paper that he hadn’t seen there before and something next to it, glinting in the dirt, a five-inch blade sharp enough to cut a man’s throat. He twisted round, studied the note and smiled.
Lavender’s green dilly dilly.
Green, he thought, code for left, meaning that Lavender—God knew how she’d blagged her way in—was somewhere to the left of the building. Picking up the blade with both hands, he scrambled to his feet.
And to think he’d dismissed Lavender from his heart and from his mind.
They came for him after midnight. There were four of them, three heftily built soldiers with balaclavas, and Koroglu. They fanned out around Tallis like jackals circling prey. He took a step back, estimating his chances of scooting past them and running to freedom as a million to one. Not attractive odds. One of the soldiers shone a powerful torch into his eyes, temporarily blinding him. Another was rattling some kind of chain or shackle. Fuck, Tallis thought, they were going to strip and manacle him, trussing him up in the same way black slaves from the deep South had been treated centuries before, and drag him to a waiting plane. Where the hell was Lavender? Tallis blinked in despair as one of them made a grab for him.
‘Hi, boys,’ a sexy American female voice purred from the left of the entrance.
Four pairs of eyes turned and hooked onto an attractive brunette, dressed in a semblance of military uniform, cap at a jaunty angle, standing in front of them. The brunette smiled, raised her weapon. There followed the unmistakable popping sound of a gun firing with a silencer attached. Two men down, everything kicked off at once. At the same time as one of the soldier’s heads disintegrated in front of him, Tallis acted with the speed of a viper. Bringing the blade up level with his assailant’s throat, he sliced once, deep and across, the man collapsing where he stood clutching the remains of his windpipe.
Koroglu, temporarily transfixed, reached for his weapon with lightning speed. Using all of his weight, Tallis barged him, knocking the big man off balance, slicing the blade blindly across Koroglu’s face and kicking him sprawling into the dirt. As Koroglu let out a howl of pain, Tallis felt Lavender’s hand clamp on his arm and drag him forward.
‘Bike’s here,’ she gasped, leaping on and gunning the engine as Tallis jumped on behind her.
With a squeal of tyres the bike tore off away from the buildings, a hail of random gunfire bursting over their heads.
‘We’ll never make it through the checkpoint,’ Tallis yelled, hanging on as best he could.
‘We’re not going through the checkpoint,’ Lavender screamed back.
Tallis glanced over his shoulder. The air base was lit up like a fairground attraction. Worse, heavy-duty searchlights scoured the perimeter. Men were running in every direction. Orders were being shouted. Vehicles commandeered.
‘Hold on,’ Lavender bellowed as the bike suddenly careered off the runway and fishtailed across the scrub of land running alongside. The bike was leaping and bouncing over the ground, the suspension perfectly attuned to the terrain. Tallis clung on, the roar of the powerful engine in his head ear-bleedingly loud. As they headed straight for the chain-link fence, romantic images of Steve McQueen in the film The Great Escape flashed through his mind.
A burst of automatic fire exploded into the night behind them, shattering any illusions. Lavender leant forward, her glorious body in line with the bike, pulling Tallis down with her. By now, several military vehicles were in pursuit, sirens blazing, soldiers with automatics hanging out of Jeep windows, taking aim. Still Lavender revved the engine, the bike running parallel now with the road. Soon he feared they’d run out of fence—then what? He glanced behind, saw the flash and sparkle of automatic weaponry heading in their direction. They still had the lead but the gap was closing. All it would take was one shot, even a lucky shot, and they’d be finished. He wondered why their pursuers didn’t simply shoot out the tyres.
‘Brace yourself,’ Lavender called out. ‘Here we go.’
The fence was as pale as the moonlight illuminating it, but it was visible and, although Tallis prayed for a miracle akin to Jesus walking on water, he knew that there was no way they could go through, let alone make a leap over. Then he saw it, up ahead, a nick in the fence—no, more than a nick, a tear, a ragged hole, only big enough to get a bike through. Oh, my God, he thought, if Lavender didn’t aim precisely, one or both of them were going to be caught and shredded on the wire. He felt the bike twist briefly to the left then right as, without losing power, she lined up the machine. Make or break, he thought, closing his eyes. He felt a rush of wind around him, a piercing pain as the skin on his left arm tore. Next he knew they were on solid road, the bike revving, blasting off into the distance. They were free.
Two hundred metres down the road, Lavender veered off into woodland to evade any roadblocks. She seemed to have an uncanny knowledge of the terrain, Tallis thought as she revved her way, earth and stones flying, down to a dirt track. At last, after several kilometres, they abandoned the bike and picked up the Land Rover Defender already parked on the other side of the woods. Tallis felt seriously impressed by her expertise and forward planning.
‘How did you learn to shoot like that?’
‘Firearms.’
‘You never said before.’
‘You never asked before. We’ll need to get those restraints removed,’ she said, crisply uncoupling the trailer used for transporting the bike.
‘Already got someone in mind.’ Oz, his Aussie biker mate, he thought. He’d do the job—without asking questions.
‘You’re bleeding,’ she said.
‘It’s nothing, a flesh wound. Mind if I ask who the Defender belongs to?’
‘Me,’ she said, scooping out some clothes from the back of the vehicle.
‘Honest?’
‘Along with my name, it’s the second real fact you know about me,’ she said, stripping off the uniform.
Look real enough, he thought, feeling an urgent stab of lust at the sight of her standing there in her bra and G-string. He idly wondered if she wanted any help with getting dressed. ‘How the hell did you know where to find me?’
‘Didn’t think I’d give up that easily, did you?’ she said, bending over, wriggling into a pair of jeans. He felt the blood fizz in his veins.
‘A bit beyond the call of duty.’
‘Who said a
nything about duty?’ She smiled, pulling up the zip and taking hold of the sweater. ‘Don’t flatter yourself.’ She flashed a cheeky grin. ‘I was curious, that’s all.’
‘You saw me go to Kennedy’s site?’
‘Yup. I wondered what you were doing with that boy.’
‘He’s a trainee computer hacker,’ Tallis said.
‘Right.’ She wrinkled her nose, not following him.
‘Christ, Jimmy,’ Tallis said. ‘Is he all right?’
‘Don’t worry. I called a cab, put him in it. He got out seconds before the police arrived.’
‘Thank God. You were saying?’
‘While I was trying to suss that one out, I spotted our fair-haired friend.’
Tallis frowned. He was starting to remember things he wanted to forget, including the fact that they had just killed three American soldiers. ‘Charlie, did you know that Asim sold me out?’
Her eyes widened in disbelief.
‘You don’t know?’ he said.
‘Of course I don’t. Are you sure?’
‘That’s what our American friends said.’
‘They would.’
‘Think they were lying?’ He really, really hoped so.
‘Are you saying that Asim betrayed you?’ She shook her head in disbelief.
He didn’t know. Betrayal was such an emotive word. It was more a case of withholding the truth. Except why should he be surprised? Withholding the truth was the spook’s stock in trade. ‘Asim once told me never to accept the first-case scenario. I didn’t realise he was being ironic.’
‘Maybe he wasn’t.’
‘Whether he was or wasn’t, there’s a bigger issue than loyalty at stake. I need to get to Kennedy, and soon. Know where he’s being held?’
‘He isn’t. He couldn’t stand it, apparently, said he’d take his chances back in the real world. Last I heard he’s back in Fort Shakenbrook. It would take an army to get inside.’
38
* * *
IT DIDN’T. It took two words.
The Mephisto Threat Page 33
