‘Surely his driver would know where he is?’
‘We can’t get hold of him, either.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’ll have Sally phone the local diplomatic missions again this morning – you know what she’s like. She has contacts in most embassies outside of the usual suspects.’ He forced a reassuring smile. His secretary had a formidable reputation, but he feared even this task would test her. ‘And of course, the hospitals.’
Deborah wrinkled her nose. ‘God, I hope he’s okay. He seemed such a lovely man when he was here for the party last month.’
‘Very dependable.’ Robert drained his coffee and picked up his jacket and briefcase at the sound of a car pulling up outside. ‘Which is why this is such unusual behaviour for him.’
‘You haven’t eaten your toast, darling.’
‘Give it to Joshua,’ he said, and kissed her cheek as their eldest son appeared.
‘Ugh, gross,’ said the teenager, collecting his father’s plate and wandering off in the direction of the living room.
‘Sit down while you’re eating,’ Debbie called after him. She turned to Robert, reached out and straightened his tie while he shrugged on his jacket. ‘And you – take some more painkillers in a couple of hours. I’m sure you’ll be fine.’
‘Right.’
A cold morning chill nipped at his ears when he opened the front door and hurried down the steps to the waiting car.
His driver opened the back door and nodded. ‘Morning, Foreign Secretary.’
‘Morning, Stephen.’
‘Heating’s on, sir, and the traffic report isn’t too bad.’
‘Good to hear, thank you.’
Robert settled onto the back seat as the door swung shut, then opened the briefcase and extracted a sheaf of paperwork.
It was twenty minutes before he blinked and looked up from the draft report, and noticed the familiar black wrought-iron railings and Georgian frontage of Downing Street properties. He pressed the intercom button.
‘What’s going on, Stephen? Why aren’t we at Portcullis House per my schedule?’
‘Sorry, Foreign Secretary,’ came the reply. ‘Urgent meeting convened by the Prime Minister for eight o’clock sharp. The call just came through.’
Robert frowned. ‘Did they say what it was about?’
The driver’s eyes met his in the rear-view mirror, and he shook his head. ‘Above my pay grade, sir.’
The Foreign Secretary shoved the paperwork back in his briefcase, his heart rate missing a beat.
What was going on?
Chapter Twenty-Six
Eva bit back a curse as a shard of metal tore into her elbow, picked out the remnants of a broken transistor with her fingernails, then shuffled closer to the door.
Her breathing was shallow now, controlled, with any fear battened down and shoved away.
She had a job to do.
Reaching the wall beside the entrance, she paused to listen.
There was movement from outside – whoever was approaching the building was well-trained, and patient.
She stared at the floor, her mind recalling the layout beyond the door.
Tall weeds, abandoned rusting equipment, rotting plywood cable reels – plenty of places to hide.
Her head jerked up as the lock mechanism released, and the barrel of a gun appeared through a gap in the door.
‘If you’re pointing a weapon at me, Delacourt, now would be a good time to lower it,’ came a laconic voice.
‘Decker?’
She exhaled as a tall figure slipped into the room and shut the door, then checked her gun was safe before walking over to him and slapping his arm. ‘You scared the shit out of me.’
He shifted a canvas sports bag onto his shoulder, then tucked his own gun under his leather jacket. ‘Think of it as free training.’
Despite the gloom, she could hear the smile in his voice. ‘I could do without it at the moment.’
‘Sounds like you’ve been busy, Delacourt.’
‘Prague?’
‘Prague. It’s all over the wires. Do you know who they were?’
She shook her head. ‘Not yet. We’re hoping Miles and Knox might be able to tell us more when we call them.’
Leading the way over to the basement door, she paused with her hand hovering above the security panel and turned. ‘I’m glad you’re here.’
He said nothing, and gestured to the concrete steps.
The lights flashed to life as she began to descend, and Nathan peered up at them from his position next to the computer screens, his arms crossed over his chest.
‘Found him, then?’
‘Good to see you too, nerd.’ Decker thrust out his hand and shook Nathan’s before turning to Marie. ‘I presume you’re the one who started all this.’
‘I––’
‘This is my sister, Marie,’ said Nathan.
‘Figures.’ Decker sank into one of the chairs beside the screens and dropped the bag onto the floor.
It landed with a soft clang of metal and something else.
Eva raised an eyebrow. ‘Supplies?’
‘Supplies.’ He leaned over and unzipped the bag, rummaged inside, then thrust an M4 carbine at her. ‘Figured these would be better. Good at close quarters, as well as a reasonable distance.’
She took the weapon from him, sighted it at the far wall and then handed it to Nathan. ‘How many did you bring?’
‘Two of these, plus four pistols and plenty of ammunition. That okay?’
‘Perfect.’ Eva leaned over, picked up one of the smaller guns and a box of ammunition, and then crossed over to where Marie hovered beside her brother. ‘Here. I presume you can use it?’
‘Yes.’ Marie held out her hand for the rounds, then thumbed them into the empty magazine. ‘Hopefully I won’t have to, right?’
‘That’s right,’ said Decker, then turned to the others. ‘You said you were waiting to hear from Miles and Knox?’
‘We thought it better to wait until you got here,’ said Nathan. ‘In case you think of anything we should ask – at the moment, you know as much as we do.’
‘Don’t hang about then. Get them on the line.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘We’ve found the driver who kidnapped Marie and her crew.’
Miles’s voice echoed off the walls of the basement, and Eva’s breath caught in her throat.
‘Who is he?’ she said, leaning forward on one of the chairs they had pulled into a semi-circle around the computer screens. ‘What has he told you?’
‘Nothing,’ said Knox, his mouth twisting. ‘He’s dead.’
‘Fuck.’ Decker crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall, away from the camera’s lens.
Unlike Eva and Nathan, he had no agreement with the Section regarding amnesty arrangements, and wasn’t prepared to risk them seeing what he looked like these days. He ran a hand over his lantern jaw and sighed. ‘Did you kill him?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Knox snapped. ‘Our team of analysts traced the car through the Automatic Number Plate Recognition system to a car park above a beach in Sussex. His body was at the bottom of a cliff.’
‘Pushed?’ said Marie. ‘Or did he jump?’
‘Throat slit, fingers missing, then pushed,’ said Miles. ‘Somebody decided he wasn’t useful anymore.’
‘Or figured out that he’d screwed up getting caught on CCTV a week before the crew were picked up,’ said Knox. ‘Either way, we have no other leads on him or his acquaintances.’
‘Did the car appear on any other CCTV or ANPR cameras after he picked us up from the restaurant?’ said Marie. ‘I mean, we went from there straight to the airfield.’
‘In which direction?’ said Knox.
‘East.’ Marie frowned. ‘He used side streets to get out of the city. We went through Wragby before he turned north – it was just country lanes after that. No villages or anything. The airfield we were flown out of was in
the middle of nowhere, but I mean that’s not unusual is it? You’ve done the same when we’ve flown––’
Knox held up his hand to silence her. ‘There’s no requirement to mention other missions here. I take your point, though – we’re looking for somewhere that a private plane can enter and leave the country without having to file a flight plan but so far, we’ve got nothing.’
‘And the driver managed to avoid the CCTV and ANPR cameras on the night he collected you,’ added Miles. ‘The ones near the restaurant were vandalised, and he knew where the others were by then. We haven’t spotted the car anywhere else.’
‘What about this Jeffrey Dukes?’ said Eva. ‘What can you tell us about him?’
‘Outside of his Foreign Office career, there’s nothing,’ he said, a note of defeat in his voice. ‘Again, we’ve discreetly gone through all other intelligence agencies’ records but the man’s––’
‘A spook,’ said Decker, then shrugged as Eva twisted around to look at him. ‘Has to be, right?’
‘That’s what we beginning to suspect,’ said Knox. ‘Zero past prior to working for Robert Nivens.’
‘What about present history?’ Nathan said. ‘What do you know about him?’
‘We sent someone over to the FCO on the pretence of wanting to speak to him – they said Dukes was due to arrive on a flight from Ankara yesterday morning according to one of the administrative team. And,’ said Miles, flicking open a file on the desk beside him, ‘he’s rumoured to be in a relationship with one of the other admin team members – a woman by the name of Charlotte Hughes.’
‘What information do you have on her?’ said Eva.
‘Career civil servant, divorced, keeps to herself – nothing on social media.’ Miles slapped the folder shut. ‘We’ll keep a watching brief in case anyone tries to contact her.’
‘If Jeffrey Dukes is a spook, who’s he working for?’ said Decker.
‘We don’t know that he is yet.’
‘Hurry, then. We need to find out what – who – we’re up against,’ said the older assassin. ‘And what the threats are.’
‘What are our next steps?’ said Eva. ‘We can’t stay where we are forever. We need to do something.’
‘Decker – can you get Marie to the airfield at Rosenheim by six o’clock tonight?’ said Miles.
‘You try anything, Newcombe, I’ll––’
‘We’re not interested in bringing you back here,’ said Knox, his tone impatient. ‘Think of this as a temporary reprieve – we can have that conversation at a later date.’
‘This is about getting Marie to safety,’ said Miles, then turned his attention to the intelligence officer. ‘We’re sending over a private charter to bring you back here – that way, you can give us an in-depth account of what happened in case we’ve missed anything, and work with the team here. Between now and your extraction time, you need to help Nathan try to identify the other personnel you saw at the airfield in Belarus.’
‘Okay,’ said Marie. She shoved her hands in the pockets of her sweatshirt. ‘I’ve been making some notes here, too – a map of the layout of the airfield so we can try to source that through satellite imagery.’
‘Good work. Our primary goal is to identify and trace the man posing as your commanding officer through other people he’s been associating with.’
‘Whoever this man is, he’s managed to keep his identity hidden from every single UK intelligence agency I’ve spoken to,’ said Knox. ‘Unless we can identify him and get a clear image, we can’t use facial recognition software to run a check on passengers through worldwide airports, either. I’ve spoken with my contacts at the NSA and CIA, and he’s a complete unknown to them as well – they’re not aware of any operations running out of Belarus.’
‘Are you sure he’s not one of them?’ said Decker. ‘He’s sounds like an evil son of a bitch – just the sort of person they like.’
‘I’ve only got their word for it,’ said Knox.
Decker snorted.
‘Which still doesn’t address the question – why use the drone to kill Dukes?’ said Miles.
‘You’re right.’ Eva leaned back in her chair. ‘It seems extreme – not to mention risky, doesn’t it? I mean why not simply pay one of the local militia to use a rocket launcher? Or someone like me to poison him?’
She heard Nathan swallow before he shook his head and shrugged.
‘What?’ she said. ‘It would’ve been easier to arrange, and less likely to cause attention if he used an assassin, wouldn’t it?
Marie paced the floor, her arms wrapped around her middle. ‘What if…?’
She shook her head.
‘Spit it out,’ Decker growled.
‘What if the man posing as Colonel Richards killed him that way to make a point? What if Dukes found out that Richards was up to something?’ The intelligence officer paused and faced the small group. ‘It’s just that, if the drone we were using was stolen, or decommissioned before being stolen en route to being scrapped, and Richards needed to show someone that it was in working order, then perhaps he saw a way to do so––’
‘––by demonstrating its capabilities and killing the one man who might have been threatening his whole organisation if he’d stumbled across it,’ Eva finished. ‘Jeffrey Dukes.’
A shocked silence filled the basement before Nathan cleared his throat.
‘Whoever Colonel Paul Richards is, then like Decker says he’s one seriously evil screwed-up son of a bitch.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Eva bit back a yawn and peered at the screen in front of her through blurred vision before rubbing her eyes.
An aroma of olive oil filled the basement as Decker broke apart each of the weapons he had arrived with and gave each a thorough clean, his movements methodical and unhurried.
‘I thought you said you grew grapes,’ said Nathan, tearing his attention away from the second screen that he and Marie were working on.
‘I sell the grapes. I keep the olives.’ Decker shrugged. ‘It’s not as good as the proper stuff for cleaning these, but less likely to draw attention.’
Marie stifled a laugh.
‘What?’
‘You’ve arrived with a sack full of handguns and assault rifles. I don’t think anyone would be worrying about gun oil if you’d been caught.’
The corner of Decker’s mouth twitched, but then he frowned and turned his attention to Eva.
‘When did you last sleep?’
She blinked. ‘I don’t know – two days ago, perhaps?’
‘Get your head down. You’re no use to them tired.’
‘He’s right,’ said Nathan. ‘We can carry on with this.’
‘I’m fine.’ Eva held up her hand to ward off the next retort as he opened his mouth. ‘Don’t worry – I’ll sleep when Decker takes Marie to the airfield. You can keep watch and wake me if anyone shows up. How’re you doing with the satellite images?’
Nathan sighed. ‘I’ve managed to download some standard imagery off the internet, but it’s not brilliant. I’d be happier if we had some up-to-date ones to work from but I can’t find anyone with a spare satellite to pass over that area. They’re too busy watching the South China Sea and North Africa for the next two days. It’ll take half that time just to request the necessary clearances.’
‘Okay, well it’s quiet outside at the moment and there’s nothing on our security cameras here, so send the files over to me. Marie, give me that map of yours. You two keep going with the photofits. We’re in danger of running out of time before you have to leave otherwise, and I want to make a move first thing in the morning.’
Eva turned back to her screen, spread out Marie’s map on the desk next to her and opened up the image files sent over from London.
After taking a swig from a bottle of water, she pulled her chair closer to the screen and peered at each of the images in turn. Despite Nathan’s best efforts to clean them up, the contours and features were pixelated
and distorted beyond recognition in some places until she found a setting that enabled her to easily scan the pastures and woodland peppering the landscape.
With Marie’s careful notations of the places she had passed on her way out of the country, Eva could narrow down the area to a set of grid references to the south of the country and work her way west.
It didn’t take long to find a potential candidate.
Her knowledge of Belarusian history was scant but she recalled the way the country had been used as a strategic frontline operation throughout the Cold War, so when she opened the fourth satellite image and noticed a deep scar through a forest just north of the Ukrainian border, her gut twisted.
‘Marie? How long does the runway need to be for a Reaper to take off safely?’
The intelligence officer wrinkled her nose. ‘About 5,000 feet but that’s when it’s fully loaded. I reckon the one we used was much shorter than that – maybe 3,000 feet, perhaps less. Why?’
She wandered across to where Eva was working, and leaned over to look at the screen.
Eva grinned. ‘I think I’ve found it. Does any of this look familiar to you?’
Marie dragged her chair over, Decker joining them as Eva enlarged the area and tried to adjust the settings.
‘That’s as close as I can get,’ she said, pushing the mouse away. ‘Well?’
‘These are the two hangars I remember,’ said Marie, and tapped the screen, unable to keep the excitement from her voice. ‘The runway is about the right length, and – look – this boundary here is where the command centre was set up. This must be the way Kelly and I ran after Josh…’
She broke off, and Decker put his hand on her shoulder.
‘We’ll pay them back for what they did to all of you, I promise. But right now, you need to tell us as much as possible about this place. Where’s the command centre? I can’t see it in this photo.’
‘This image is over a year old,’ said Eva, peering at the screen.
Marie sniffed. ‘The command centre is … it’s like a shipping container. That’s the best way I can describe it. About the same size too. I didn’t get the impression it had been there long either because it was still on a trailer.’
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