by Eva Hudson
“And there’s no safe.”
“Oh no, we don’t have safes in the room, madam. But I can keep valuables here if you like?”
There were no other rooms available, and the lock could not be fixed until the morning. He did offer to give her a complimentary breakfast to apologize on behalf of the management.
Ingrid ate in the Indian restaurant on the high street and marveled that—no matter how small the town—you could always get a good curry in Britain. In the big cities, Indian restaurants had incorporated tapas and haute cuisine, but in places like Bishopsgate they delivered the quintessential curry house experience, with the menu and recipes as reliable as if each restaurant was part of a chain.
Ingrid locked her valuables in the glove box of the Prius on her way back into the hotel and jammed a chair against the door in her room. She washed the bottoms of her trousers in the bathroom sink and draped them over the radiator, hoping they would be wearable by the morning. Her sneakers were probably ruined. She’d only bought them at the airport twenty-four hours beforehand.
Lying on the soft bed, Ingrid rehearsed the things she needed to tell Thames Valley Police in the morning. The doctored CCTV footage. The scratches on Marcus Williams’s motorcycle jacket. The reports she’d overheard in the office about Steve in Portugal. It was all circumstantial. She still needed a witness who would categorically say a man had been riding. She absolutely had to find the woman from Turkmenistan.
She slept surprisingly well. In the morning, her trousers were almost presentable and the weather had even cleared up a little. Ingrid decided to leave the car and head to the police station on foot. She crossed the forecourt, grinding her sneakers purposefully into the gravel to help rub off the mud as she passed the Prius. The night manager had been good to his word about getting the lock fixed. A handyman’s white van was parked near the forecourt exit, its doors open while its owner searched for his tools.
A smartly dressed man turned into the parking lot. The way his suit fitted suggested he worked out. She stepped to one side to get around him, he stepped in front of her.
“Excuse me,” she said, without making eye contact.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he blocked her path again.
Ingrid looked up at his face expecting to see one of those apologetic smiles the English were obliged to plaster on their faces during such encounters. But his features were set. His eyes fixed on hers and he definitely wasn’t smiling.
Adrenaline flooded her veins. Footsteps crunched toward her from behind. Instinctively, Ingrid sharply raised her elbow up and back, but instead of landing a blow, the handyman grabbed her arm. His other hand covered her mouth. She kicked out at the man in the suit who grasped her ankle and held it.
Ingrid bit the hand over her face, forcing her attacker to withdraw it. “You fuckers,” she said, her voice rasping in her throat
“Now, now,” the suited man said. English accent.
Patronizing fuck.
He grabbed her other foot and the two of them tumbled her into the back of the van. Ingrid landed hard. Her face scraped along the floor. Her ankle whacked into the wheel arch and they slammed the doors shut before she could yell for help. The whole thing had taken less than five seconds.
The men jumped in the front and started the motor. They reversed sharply, then turned on to the road. Ingrid winced as they moved. Her cheek burned but there was no blood, and her nostrils watered with the sting of gasoline. She twisted around to inspect her ankle.
“Hello, Ingrid.”
She wasn’t alone. Two men sat on a bench and stared at her. Both thirties, both tall and broad and soldier-fit. She didn’t reply. She didn’t know how. What the hell was happening?
“I’m John. This is Paul. You’ve already met George and Ringo.” Israeli accent. Expensive suit.
Bile leeched into her stomach and a shiver rippled over her skin. Ingrid blinked hard, attempting to focus, trying to compute what the fuck was going on.
The two men smiled at her. Paul—a giant in sweatpants and varsity hoodie––reached out a long leg and clamped a foot down on Ingrid’s backpack. He dragged it toward him with his heel. Ingrid tried to grab it, but John kicked her arm.
“Play nice,” John said. “Or you won’t get to play at all.”
John sat with his legs far apart, elbows resting on his knees, and his hands clasped in front of his face. On the little finger of his right hand was a signet ring. His tailored attire was in contrast to the inside of the shabby, second-hand van. The only light came from a small mesh grille through which George and Ringo’s heads were visible.
Ingrid pressed her palms into the floor and curled herself into a seated position. A collar of heat gripped her throat. Deep breath. Think.
She looked for an exit. Three possible options. The grille, a sliding door on the side of the van, and the double doors at the rear. She couldn’t see any weapons, but assumed they’d have them. She had no chance of overpowering them. What are your options?
Her phone. It was in her pocket. If she got the opportunity, she could press the top button five times and silently summon the police. And if that wasn’t possible, at some point in the future the embassy would use it to track her. Back up would come. Eventually. What else?
Ingrid tried to remember the kidnap protocols, but her brain couldn’t parse the memory. Come on! What else?
She hadn’t been tied up. That was good. She could run if she got the chance, and Ingrid bet on herself to outrun anyone. The moment the doors open, be ready to run.
Paul plunged his tattooed forearm into her bag and searched around. “It’s not in here.” She couldn’t make out his accent. Definitely not British or American. He tipped her backpack upside down, sending a snowfall of receipts, coins and tampons onto the floor of the van, the coins skating sideways as the van veered sharply left. She had no idea what direction they’d taken her in.
Be compliant. Be obedient. Don’t make them angry.
“It must be on her,” John said. “Get it.”
Paul dipped his chin and sucked his teeth. Outside, Ingrid heard a siren. Had someone seen them abduct her? She pushed the thought from her mind as Paul leaned over.
“Give me your phone.” It was a South African accent.
Be compliant.
Ingrid said nothing and reached into her jacket pocket. She felt the top button. Her finger circled it as she maintained eye contact with Paul.
Be obedient.
She handed it over without pressing it. The siren got louder and the van pulled over to let the emergency vehicle pass. No one was coming to rescue her.
“Aw,” John said. “Did you think they were here for you?”
Paul grunted. “Unlock it,” he said, handing it back to her.
Again, her finger pressed against the top button. She wouldn’t get away with it.
Don’t make them angry.
Ingrid depressed the home button, unlocking the phone with her fingerprint. Paul snatched it out of her hand.
“Email or message?” he asked John.
“Email.”
“Who to?”
John shrugged. “Just reply to the most recent.”
Ingrid had assumed they’d toss the phone out of the van to stop them being tracked. Or download its data to a laptop. What were they planning?
John pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Paul. “Word for word, okay?”
“Yes, boss.”
Ingrid resisted the urge to ask questions. The signet ring meant she had a pretty good idea who she was dealing with and what they had planned. Now wasn’t the time to get answers. All that mattered was staying alive. Her task was to stay compliant so that when she made her move, it came out the blue.
“What’s this word?” Paul asked, showing John the scrap of paper.
John leaned over. “Overwhelming.”
“The past few weeks have been overwhelming,” Paul said, reading the handwritten scrawl out loud. “An
d I don’t want to––” He showed John the paper again.
John peered at it. “Carry on. Should be two words.” He turned to her. “Maybe you’d prefer to dictate your own suicide note?”
He waited for her to reply.
“No? Might make it more authentic.”
17
“How much further?” John shouted.
“Almost there,” came the reply. Another Israeli accent.
Her captors were most likely ex-Mossad. That was a problem. Even the CIA thought Mossad was the best secret intelligence service in the world. What was it Nick Angelis used to say? “The CIA gets cocky, and the FSB gets sloppy, but Mossad just gets the job done.”
In the ten years Ingrid had been at the Bureau, the intelligence business had moved away from state-sponsored activity to private agencies working for oligarchs, Silicon Valley billionaires, movie stars and hedge fund owners. An ex-Mossad agent could pocket a million dollars in a few years in the private sector by gathering blackmail evidence on corporate rivals, or surveilling the wives of husbands wanting cheaper divorce settlements. Unshackled from the diplomatic burden carried by MI6 and other state agencies, these private security firms were answerable only to the almighty dollar. They had all the infrastructure of the old days, but none of the responsibilities.
The mix of Israeli and South African accents made it likely the Beatles worked for an agency called Red Box, an outfit known for equal measures of ruthlessness and effectiveness. They were more than capable of hacking into the embassy’s CCTV footage, and they would certainly have contacts at British Transport Police who could mislay an ANPR request. Bribing a forensics lab to speed up the report on her motorcycle was also within their purview. The muscles between Ingrid’s shoulder blades fused into a solid mass.
The van shook as the road surface changed, throwing her across the plywood floor as the wheels dipped and wobbled. Paul grunted. His fingers had tapped the wrong letters.
“How’s it looking out there?” John asked.
“It’s clear,” Ringo said. He wasn’t talking about the weather.
Ingrid looked again for a weapon, any heavy object she could aim at a head, or a sharp one she could lunge at a chest. There wasn’t even a tow rope. The only things that rattled as they bounced over the stony ground were the strewn contents of her backpack. Ingrid turned away from her captors and spat on the floor to leave a DNA trace for whoever investigated her death.
“You finished with that email?” John asked.
“Almost,” Paul replied. “You really think she’d sign it off ‘with regret’?”
They both stared at her. She tried to keep her face in neutral.
“Just her name,” John said.
The van slowed. They would be stopping soon. The journey hadn’t taken long. It was less than ten minutes since she left her hotel room. Ingrid closed her eyes so she could listen. She needed every piece of intel she could get. She couldn’t hear a road. Or a plane overhead. No construction noises or industrial machinery. The only thing she could hear beyond the battered walls of the van was the squawks of seagulls. They were a long way from any coast. Where the hell had they taken her?
The driver screeched up the hand brake and the motor stopped. Ingrid prepared to run. She studied John and Paul. They were preternaturally calm. Her heart beat so hard she could feel her pulse under her tongue.
The front doors opened and footprints squelched outside as George and Ringo walked to the rear of the van. They yanked the doors open, flooding the van with daylight and the stench of a nearby landfill site.
Well, that explains the seagulls.
When Ingrid’s eyes adjusted to the light, she saw that Ringo had pulled a tan-colored handgun out of a holster under his jacket. A Sig Sauer 17. She wouldn’t be able to outrun a bullet.
“All done?” John asked.
“Sent it.” Paul tossed Ingrid’s phone to George, who pocketed it. George actually looked a bit like a Beatle with a messy mop of dark hair, a slightly confused expression and a gangly, gawky appearance. He wore cargo pants and a woolen jacket and was almost certainly not from a military background. More likely recruited from a tech firm. Of the four, he was the only one Ingrid could overpower.
“Right then,” John said. “Let’s get this over and done with.” He turned to Ingrid. “Okay little missy, you want to come with us?”
She scowled at him.
“You’re going to get out nice and slow, you understand? You try anything stupid and we will make this a lot more painful for you, okay?” John’s eyes held hers, unblinking. “You know how this works. You saw what happened in Portugal, didn’t you?”
Ingrid sneered at him.
John jumped out. His top lip curled as his leather loafers oozed into the mud. His designer pants were going to get ruined. He extended a hand toward Ingrid, but she did not accept his offer of assistance. If she got the chance, she’d need both hands to escape.
Ingrid shuffled over to the open doors and scrambled into a crouch position. Overhead power cables spliced a white-gray sky. In the distance, a swarm of seagulls circled a rising slope of fetid earth, garbage peppering the dark soil like fallen glitter.
“Come on,” John said.
Ingrid heard the snap of rubber and turned. Paul’s hands were now encased in blue nitrile gloves. Her brain felt as if it had come loose, swirling inside her skull like a carnival ride. Acid rose in her throat. She had to bury the rage and banish the fear. The only thing that matters is staying alive.
Ingrid jumped before Paul pushed her, and her feet splashed into a muddy puddle. Ringo gestured the Sig in the direction he wanted her to move. Once clear of the van’s doors, Ingrid saw she was at an abandoned construction site. The concrete skeleton of a half-finished building loomed over them. Beyond it, deep piling rods stuck out of the ground like bamboo canes in a giant’s vegetable patch. Stacked shipping containers—some kind of site office—lay rusted and forgotten. In the neighboring field was a dilapidated caravan and miserable looking pony. Up ahead she spotted a galvanized steel gate breaking an otherwise impenetrable hedgerow of buddleia and bindweed. Apart from the hump of landfill, the land was flat. Electrified cables of a train track marked the far edge of the construction site. A vandalized realtor’s sign proclaimed she was in ‘Broughton Business Park, Buckinghamshire’s new start-up hub’. The financing must have run out.
Keeping her head bent—a deliberately meek posture—Ingrid swung her gaze from side to side, scanning the landscape for her escape route. Fear rattled her jaw. You’ll get a chance. Wait for your moment.
George shut the van doors and ran a couple of steps ahead. He pulled back a section of chain-link fence and climbed through the gap. John, taller, struggled with the same maneuver.
“Your turn,” Ringo said, shaking the Sig at her.
Once through, the others followed. Ingrid looked up at the abandoned construction project and counted ten stories. A thick steel chain dangled from a pulley crane mounted on the roof, like a figurehead on the prow of a shipwreck.
Ingrid walked slowly, trying to buy herself some thinking time.
“Mind your step,” Paul said, leading her into the building. Although there were no walls, the place smelled damp and the air was cooler. Sounds were amplified. Stone lintels and timber were scattered over the floor. A length of wood would be a good weapon, she thought, though it was no match for the Sig. John, George and Ringo followed close behind.
The structure had a rectangular footprint the size of three tennis courts. It consisted of nothing more than concrete floors held up by a forest of concrete pillars, their symmetry occasionally ruined by two elevator shafts and a zigzag of stairs. Their footsteps echoed off the hard, damp surfaces.
“Up,” John said as they approached a staircase.
Ingrid suppressed a smile. The building was reminiscent of the multistory parking lots where she trained for parkour. A shoulder injury meant she hadn’t practiced for a while, but if there was one p
lace where the balance tipped in her favor, it was a structure like this. The open concrete staircases were perfect for cat leaps and monkey vaults. She would get her moment.
Stay obedient. Stay compliant. Stay vigilant.
Cable reels the size of dining tables littered the second story. Ingrid searched for a discarded wrench or an overlooked hammer, but John instructed her to keep climbing. The wind picked up, making the chain dangling off the pulley creak ominously. On the third floor she paused, pretending to be out of breath. She looked around, rotating her gaze from one missing wall to the other, searching for either an escape or a weapon. A sodden rope snaked across the floor.
“Up,” John said again.
Paul bounced up ahead. His stride was so big he took the concrete stairs three at a time. He was the only one who had put on gloves: he would be the one to kill her. Ringo kept two steps behind her, aiming the Sig at her head. Ingrid took a deep breath and moved slowly. She wanted them to think she was beaten. That she was being a good little girl.
“What floor is this?” George asked. He also had South African accent but with a Californian lilt. Definitely a Silicon Valley alumnus.
“Fourth,” John answered.
A random fact from a training manual flew into Ingrid’s head: from the fourth floor, a human of average height, build and fitness has a fifty percent chance of survival. The chance decreases by ten percent with every additional story. Not that it mattered. If she survived the fall, the Sig would finish the job.
A concrete mixer and stacks of reinforcing steel mesh had been abandoned on the fifth floor. Not the weapons she was hoping to find. However, even if she saw a heavy tool lying around, they weren’t straying far enough from the staircase for her to retrieve it.
You’ve got elbows. You’ve got fists. Fingers that can gouge out eyes. Feet that can trip people up.
Ingrid stopped looking for a weapon and concentrated on identifying a means of escape. She counted the steps between floors. Thirteen, approximately eight inches each. What was that? Ten feet per story? Something like that. She paused at the next level to give herself a chance to examine the elevator shafts. The light was dim and the shaft was thirty yards away, but she reasoned it probably had a car inside it. Builders erected the elevator shafts first to take materials to the upper stories. That meant there would be cables inside them, and cables were a great exit route if you were trained in parkour.
