Seek and Destroy

by Alan McDermott

  “I couldn’t leave empty-handed,” Eva said, “so I lied. Please don’t take it personally.”

  “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

  He turned away from her to face the door. She pushed it open for him to enter first.

  “Andrew,” Sonny said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to see Tom.”

  Gray stood, and Eva could see concern etched on his face.

  “What is it?”

  “Alana was kidnapped by the ESO.”

  Gray’s hands balled into fists. “Where’s Melissa?”

  Harvey’s silence said it all.

  Gray picked up an empty soda bottle and threw it against the wall. It smashed into a thousand pieces. “They’ve got my daughter?”

  “I’m sorry,” Harvey said, but Gray was beyond words. He rushed Harvey and grabbed his throat with a single hand.

  “Where is she?”

  Harvey croaked an inaudible reply. His face began turning red as he clawed at Gray’s forearm.

  “Enough!” Len moved quickly behind Gray and took him in a headlock.

  Sonny joined in, pinching the nerves in Gray’s wrist and forcing him to release his grip.

  Len spun Gray around and pushed him on to the bed. “Didn’t you hear what he said? Alana’s missing too.”

  Gray was panting as if he’d just run a marathon. His face remained scarlet, but Eva could see the fight draining out of him.

  “We’re in this together,” Len said in a more soothing tone. “We need you calm and thinking straight.”

  Gray tried to get up but Len pushed him back down and stood over him.

  “Okay,” Gray said, his breathing coming under control. “What are you doing to get them back?” he asked Harvey.

  “I’ve got my colleagues going through CCTV, and the Met are all over it. A detective chief super is running that side of things.”

  “What are their demands?” Eva asked, earning another glare from Gray.

  “They haven’t been in contact yet, but they will. I’m sure they took the girls to get you to contact Len and Carl. It’s Eva they’re after.”

  “What about Sanders?” Gray asked Eva. “Did he give you anything?”

  She pulled the piece of paper from her pocket. “Coordinates to Langton’s private island.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Gray asked, standing next to Len. “Wait. Isn’t he dead?”

  “Sanders says he’s still alive, but I think it’s a trap,” she said. “The coordinates are for an island in the Pacific, but it doesn’t officially exist. Farooq, take a look.”

  She gave the paper to Farooq, who entered the details into a screen on his laptop.

  “Nothing there,” he confirmed.

  “As I said, it’s a trap. They get us all on a plane, send us to a remote part of the world hundreds of miles from the nearest flight path or shipping lane, then shoot us down. Game over.”

  “Then Sanders was a waste of time,” Gray said. “Either he made it up, or they lied to him, too.” He turned to Harvey. “Does this change anything on your end? Can you get us information on the ESO now that they’ve got our girls?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll head back and speak to Ellis right now, but if it were an option, I think she would have suggested it already.”

  “Ask her anyway. In the meantime, what can we do?”

  Harvey stood in thought. “Nothing,” he said eventually. “Just remain out of sight and let us handle it. I’ll buy a new burner cell and be in touch every hour.”

  “If you’re going to do that, just give me your own phone,” Farooq said.

  Harvey handed it over, and Farooq spent a couple of minutes tapping at the screen before handing it back.

  “I added an app called Shield. If you need to talk to us, send a message through that. It’s more secure than the systems you use at work. I’ve put our details in the contact list.”

  “Thanks.” Harvey walked to the door, then turned back. “I’m really sorry, Tom. I’ll do everything I can to get her back.”

  “I know you will.”

  Harvey seemed to take that as encouragement, though Eva thought it sounded more like a threat.

  CHAPTER 25

  Harvey’s eyes were watering, and he knew it was from lack of sleep. He’d been awake for twenty-nine hours now, and was still no closer to finding his daughter and Melissa. His colleagues at MI5 had given up their free time to help, but every lead turned out to be a dead end.

  The decoy car driver had dumped his vehicle in a supermarket parking lot and gone inside with a bag. They hadn’t seen him come out again. Police had been sent to get in-store CCTV recordings, but the man had obviously cased the place beforehand. He’d disappeared into a camera blind spot and vanished.

  The same happened with the man who’d left the phone on the Tube. He’d gotten off after two stops, then walked into a convenience store and disappeared. A follow-up visit by police revealed that the man had walked straight through and out the back exit, much to the annoyance of the shop’s owner.

  They had concentrated their main efforts on the other car, the one they suspected of carrying the girls. Images captured in London showed a woman and small child in the rear seats, though there had been no clear front view of the interior.

  Tracking the car had been easy, but ultimately fruitless. They’d found it abandoned in a lay-by between two sleepy villages in East Sussex, and while a forensics team was combing the vehicle now, they weren’t hopeful.

  Harvey was thinking about joining Sarah on a cot in the meeting room when Elaine broke his train of thought.

  “Andrew, we’ve got a hit!”

  Harvey hurried to her desk.

  “A party matching Myers and the girls took a Cessna from Shoreham Airport to Paris Orly.”

  Harvey had asked DCS Wayland to send officers to every small port in the country to interrogate the staff. The police had been armed with a recent photo of Melissa and an e-fit of Myers, and it looked to have paid off.

  The fact that the girls might be in another country wasn’t such good news.

  “When was that?”

  “Three o’clock yesterday afternoon.”

  Twenty-one hours ago . . .

  “Get the IDs they used and see if they flag anything in Paris. I want the flight plan. And find out who the pilot was. Hamad, contact the DGSI and see if they can track them beyond the airport.”

  The DGSI, the French equivalent of MI5, had an informal agreement with the Security Service, and on several occasions had shared information. Harvey hoped this would be one of those times.

  “The police already have the pilot,” Elaine said. “He’s being held at a station in Worthing. They plan to transfer him to Paddington Green in the next few hours. Want me to liaise with DCS Wayland on that?”

  “Yes, and request updates every thirty minutes.”

  After repeated dead ends, the investigation had suddenly kicked into gear. The pilot might be a valuable lead, or just an innocent party caught up in the mess.

  Time would tell.

  The worst part of the discovery was that the girls had been taken out of the country. MI5’s remit was to protect the UK from internal foes; anything beyond British territorial waters was a matter for MI6.

  Harvey hated the thought of putting his daughter’s life in the hands of MI6 and the French intelligence services. Then again, he could easily think of worse scenarios.

  On his way to see the boss, he thought about waking Sarah to let her know about the latest development but decided against it. There was nothing she could add to the search right now, so it was better if she slept and returned to the fray refreshed. Likewise Gray. He’d want to know the next steps, and that was up to Ellis.

  Harvey knocked on her door and walked in without waiting to be called.

  “A new lead suggests they flew to Paris,” he said.

  Her eyes panned right. The main office was windowless, but if s
he’d had X-ray vision, she would have been staring at Vauxhall Cross, the home of the Secret Intelligence Service—MI6.

  “You understand what that means,” Ellis said.

  “I know what protocol says, but—”

  “But nothing, Andrew.” Ellis sat back in her chair. “Look at you. You can barely function. Didn’t I tell you to get some sleep last night?”

  “You try sleeping when your child is missing!” He immediately regretted the outburst. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m ordering you to get some sleep. Where’s Sarah?”

  “She hit the cots a few hours ago.”

  “She did the right thing. Go and join her. Even if it’s just for a couple of hours. In the meantime, have Hamad collate everything you’ve got and I’ll take it across the river myself.”

  “They won’t give it priority,” Harvey said. “It’ll be tomorrow before they even contact the French.”

  “They’ll start acting immediately, I assure you.”

  Harvey wanted to argue but he felt too drained to try. Not even the recent leads had generated enough adrenaline to keep him functioning at full capacity.

  “Go on,” Ellis insisted. “I’ll speak to Hamad. You get your head down.”

  “I will,” Harvey said, “once the file’s ready.”

  He reluctantly left her office and went to give Hamad his instructions. His friend had also pulled an all-nighter, but had sensibly grabbed a few hours’ sleep during a quiet period. Harvey now wished he’d done the same.

  He passed on Ellis’s order, and stood over his friend to make sure every detail was included.

  “Andrew.”

  Ellis was standing in her doorway, and she gestured for him to join her.

  “I just got off the phone with Faulkner.”

  Ellis had been to see the home secretary the previous day to inform him of the situation and the ESO’s suspected involvement. He’d promised to get back to her after speaking with the prime minister.

  “Is he going to open the ESO files to us?”

  “No,” Ellis said. “The PM thinks it highly unlikely that an organization like the ESO would send people to harm the daughters of an MI5 operative and a British civilian living in Italy.”

  “What? Did he even listen to what you told him?”

  “I not only told him,” Ellis said, “I provided a detailed report. How he can’t see the connection is beyond me.”

  “Well, you know what? I don’t give a fuck what the PM thinks. If we get nothing from the DGSI, I’m going to search every database we have for signs of the ESO. They can have my job. I don’t care. Nothing’s going to—”

  Harvey’s phone beeped, indicating a new message. He pulled it from his pocket and frowned when he didn’t recognize the number. He hit the notification to open it and almost dropped the cell.

  It was a picture of Melissa standing on a beach. Next to her, on a blanket, was Alana. Darkness framed them, though a couple of lanterns burned in the background, and waves lapped on a sandy shore.

  A beach.

  An island!

  Melissa looked miserable. Alana appeared to be in mid-wail.

  Underneath the picture, a message read:

  You have 24 hours to deliver Driscoll to me. Upload a video to YouTube with the title ‘Willoff Georal scandok’, and in it give me her location. Any tricks, the girls die. I will reply in the comments with their location when I have Driscoll.

  The name was clearly designed to be hard to trip across. Only someone entering the exact phrase would be likely to find it among the millions—perhaps billions—of videos available on the website.

  Harvey handed the phone to Ellis. She took in the picture and handed it back. “Get it to Gerald. Maybe he can trace the origin.”

  Harvey raced to Gerald Small’s office. He found the tech banging away on his keyboard.

  “I need you to tell me where this message came from,” Harvey said.

  Small took the cell and connected a lead to the power socket, then plugged the other end into his laptop. He hit a few keys before opening a command prompt. He typed what looked to Harvey like gibberish, and what appeared on the screen in response wasn’t any more legible.

  “Sorry, but it’s been bounced off so many servers it’s impossible to determine where it was sent from.”

  Damn.

  “Not even a rough idea? I need to know where that picture was taken.”

  “Ah, now, that’s a different kettle of fish.”

  Small opened the image, then brought up another screen next to it. “All pictures have metadata. It tells you things like when it was taken, the F-stop, exposure time, focal length, flash—”

  “Can it tell us where it was taken?”

  “As I was about to say, even where it was taken. Most cameras have a built-in GPS, and the location is embedded along with all the other information . . . if it isn’t turned off. Here we go.”

  Harvey looked at what Small had highlighted on the screen. It was just a series of numbers, separated by a comma.

  “Where is that?” he asked.

  Small copied the coordinates and pasted them into Google Maps. It centered in on a blue screen. Gerald Small zoomed out until a few islands came into view.

  “Hmm. According to this, it was taken in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”

  It was too much of a coincidence. “Go back to the coordinates,” he said, and unhooked his phone from the lead. He opened the Shield app and typed a message to Eva, asking her for the digits Sanders had given her the day before.

  Eva replied within seconds, and Harvey read them out while Small entered them into the map.

  “Ask it for directions from one to the other,” Harvey said.

  Small did as instructed, and a dotted line appeared between the two points.

  They were three hundred yards apart.

  “Could someone have planted that metadata manually?” Harvey asked.

  “No. There’s a flag, here, called—appropriately enough—‘Has Changed.’ It reads ‘false’ and can’t be set manually, so this hasn’t been edited.”

  Harvey sent Eva another message.

  The island exists. I’m on my way.

  CHAPTER 26

  Harvey ran to the meeting room and shook Sarah awake. “I think we’ve found the girls,” he told her, then left her to bring herself to full consciousness. His next stop was Ellis’s office.

  “Gerald tracked the location the picture was taken in,” he said as he burst through the door. “It’s an island in the Pacific.”

  “It really does exist?”

  “Apparently so, which means Henry Langton could be alive.”

  Harvey had already told her and the rest of the team about the coordinates Bill Sanders had given Eva, but that they’d seemed to be a red herring at best. Until the information Gerald Small pulled from the photograph suggested Sanders had been telling the truth after all. “So there’s no need to get Six involved,” he said. “Or the French.”

  “Then how exactly do you plan to get them back?” Ellis asked.

  “I’m going in with Tom,” Harvey said, his voice ripe with defiance.

  “The hell you are!”

  “Then you tell me how I should handle it. Pass it to Faulkner and let him deal with it? It took him a day to ask the PM a simple question! By the time he makes a decision, the girls will be dead! You saw the message. We’ve got twenty-four hours.”

  “You have an alternative,” said Ellis.

  “What? Hand over Eva and hope this psychopath keeps his word and returns the girls unharmed?”

  “I’m offering balance, that’s all.”

  “Thanks,” Harvey said, “but that’s not going to happen. Langton believes his island is undetectable, and that if he kills the girls, there’ll be no blowback. He has no incentive to release them.”

  Ellis made a face that said she agreed with him.

  “Plus, by the time Faulkner convinces the PM to send a team in, it’ll be
too late. We have to go now.”

  Ellis stared at him and, after an awkward silence, looked down at her computer and began typing. “I think you’re too close to this investigation,” she said without looking up. “You’re also in no fit state to function properly. I’m ordering you to take seven days’ rest, effective immediately. The memo will be with you in the next couple of minutes.”

  Harvey started to protest, then realized what she was really saying: Do it, but on your own time.

  “Thank you,” he said, and rushed back into the main office. Sarah was waiting for him.

  “I’m going to get her,” he told her.

  “Where is she?”

  “About 2,500 miles west of Ecuador. Langton’s island is real.”

  “What? How the hell did they get her there? And why take her there?”

  “Langton thinks it’s somewhere we can’t find her,” Harvey said. “Take a look at this.”

  He showed her the message that had come through earlier. “Gerald was able to locate the place it was taken. It matched the coordinates Eva thought were fake. I’m going to ask Tom to take me in and get the girls back.”

  “I’m coming, too.”

  “No! I need you here. If something happens to me . . . at least Alana will still have one parent.”

  “Fuck you, Andrew Harvey!”

  The shout caught everyone’s attention, and all eyes turned to them as they stood in the middle of the office, squaring off.

  “We haven’t got time for this,” Harvey said, lowering his voice. “Twenty-four hours. I have to go.”

  “And I’m coming with you.” She grabbed her coat and purse from the back of her chair and walked to the door, waiting for him.

  Harvey grabbed his own jacket and they walked down to the parking lot together.

  “This isn’t some macho ‘I’m the alpha male and you’re the helpless female’ routine,” he told her. “I’m genuinely worried about going there.”

  “Then don’t go,” Sarah said. “Leave it to the professionals. Tom, Len, Sonny, this is what they do. And from what you’ve told me about Eva and the others, they’ve got enough people to do the job.”

  “But it’s my daughter,” Harvey said.

  “Exactly. And when she gets home, she’ll need her father. In person, not a picture on the wall to remember him by.”