SAVING HARRY a gripping crime thriller you won’t want to put down

by Dan Latus

  But weeks definitely were a problem, and they started to slip by.

  After four weeks of waiting, Harry’s nerves were becoming increasingly jagged from his steadily mounting concern. Anxiety and insomnia were playing hell with his entire system. He was struggling to cope.

  It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been the one trying to extricate himself. He would have had plenty to do, and no time to worry. But it was Johanne in the firing line, and he didn’t know what the hell was happening.

  I’ve got to do something, he thought at last. I can’t go on like this. I need to know.

  Something had gone wrong. It must have. Something bad had happened. It was the only explanation.

  Harry’s next act didn’t come easy to him. In fact, it went against everything he and Johanne had dreamed up and planned together. The cabin was their bolthole, their secret hideaway. It had given them occasional respite for several years, but it was also where they planned to live together when their time in the war zone was over. That time had been approaching fast, and now it was here. People doing what they did tended to have short active lives. Then they either quit or were killed.

  Now all their plans were in jeopardy. He was contemplating taking a step that would risk inviting the world to their door. But Johanne came first. Their safe base would inevitably be revealed if he were to try to find out why she hadn’t joined him, and why she wasn’t answering her phone. He needed to contact somebody with the capability to find out, even though that would mean his whereabouts could be discovered.

  Phone calls, emails, texts. You would have to be a lot cleverer than he was to encrypt a message in such a way that its origin was untraceable. Even the much-vaunted social media encrypted-messaging services were transparent to experts such as the people who inhabited the GCHQ complex in Cheltenham.

  He spent the best part of a day mulling over the possibilities and the dangers. He considered flying somewhere distant before sending a message, but that wouldn’t really work. Not for long enough. Besides, he needed to be here, in case Johanne turned up or tried somehow to contact him at the cabin. And he wanted to know now, or as near as possible to now. All that meant he needed to trust somebody, at least to some extent, and he didn’t have a lot of options.

  In the end, he decided to hell with it and phoned Giles Henderson. He explained that he was concerned about Johanne, his colleague in the field in Ukraine. He was unable to contact her and needed to know if something had gone wrong. Had something happened to her, perhaps as spill-over from the debacle in Slovakia? Could inquiries be made?

  Henderson listened patiently, and then asked in a non-committal tone, ‘Do you still have the information we were expecting?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Damned right he did! He’d moved heaven and earth to get it. No way would he abandon or lose that.

  ‘It wasn’t lost in Slovakia?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It is much needed, Harry. You know that. Our friends are desperate for it.’

  The guarded rebuke was as much as Henderson would give him at this stage, Harry knew. Henderson wouldn’t want to risk losing him, and it, altogether.

  The situation was delicately poised. Harry was asking for a favour of a thinly disguised personal nature, and he couldn’t openly threaten or bargain to press his case. Not with a man like Giles Henderson. He was old school. They didn’t make many like him these days. Better, far better, to leave things unsaid if he were to get anywhere.

  ‘You don’t need to tell me how important it is,’ Harry said. ‘And you don’t need to worry. You’ll get it.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘As soon as it’s safe for me to deliver it, and when I’m sure you can protect it from being leaked.’

  Henderson let that qualified assurance lie for a moment. Then he said, ‘I don’t suppose you want to tell me where you are?’

  ‘No, I can’t do that. There was a leak — there is a leak — and I don’t know where it is. You need to find and plug the leak before I stick my head above the parapet again.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Henderson said.

  Chapter Eight

  Kiev, Ukraine. May 2018.

  It was a bright, frosty morning when she stepped outside the apartment building for the last time. Summer was nearly here, but the nights were still cold. The roofs of all the cars parked in the street glistened with thick rime. All, that was, but for the two vehicles parked right outside, not ten feet away, with their engines running and puffing out little clouds of diesel fumes and water vapour.

  She took in the waiting vehicles immediately, and the men closing in on her from both sides an instant later. Automatically, she spun round and reached for the edge of the slowly closing door behind her.

  Too late.

  A hand grasped her by the upper arm. She threw it off with a violent jerk and followed up with an elbow into the face of a man on her other side. The door slammed shut as someone else placed himself between it and her. An arm reached across her throat. Desperately, she raked her heel down her attacker’s shin. The pressure eased. But then a man in front of her punched her heavily in the stomach. She folded up, paralysed, unable even to breathe.

  They picked her up and threw her into the back of one of the waiting vehicles. Her head struck something hard, dazing her even more as she struggled for breath. Then someone jumped on her and bile and vomit rose in her throat.

  As the engine roared and the vehicle lurched into violent motion, she struggled to get out from under the weight on top of her. A gruff voice rapped out an order in Russian to stop, making her struggle even more. Then she saw a hand holding a gun and heard and felt an explosion that caused the world to go black. She heard and felt nothing more after that.

  Chapter Nine

  London, June 2018.

  Giles Henderson was a satisfied man. At last he had a chance of locating the elusive Harry Stone and doing something about it.

  Then he frowned. Stone knew that, of course. So why had he broken cover? Thinking it through, he smiled with even greater satisfaction. Stone wasn’t stupid. This was Stone’s way of telling him he was still in the game.

  What else? Well, Stone had obviously had a very narrow escape indeed. He’d been lucky, as well as careful. Not surprisingly, he believed — rightly, as it happened — the information about the meeting had been leaked. And until the source of the leak was found and stopped, it seemed that Stone was intent on handling his own security.

  Henderson frowned. Stone was right, of course. Absolutely. Nobody yet knew where the leak had sprung from. That meant that, as the carrier of vital information, Stone remained at risk. He couldn’t blame the man for wanting to look after himself.

  All the same, he — and others — badly wanted that information. To get it, he was going to have to do what Stone had asked. And find the leak, as well, of course.

  First, he turned to Stone’s request about this colleague. Stone regarded making contact with her, the Erickson woman, an urgent priority. He was concerned about her, presumably with reason. Perhaps she had been involved in the business in Slovakia. Either that or . . .

  He shook his head. Something was going on there, even if he didn’t know what. No doubt all would become clear in time.

  Technically, Henderson mused, Stone wasn’t actually his operative at present. He had been seconded to a NATO undercover intelligence unit working in the Donbass to try to limit, and hopefully offset, some of the damage Russia had achieved there in recent years. Crimea was long gone, probably irreversibly so, but the West didn’t want to see the rest of Ukraine broken apart by Russian pressure.

  So far, most of the country was holding together, despite some shenanigans at the head of government level in Kiev. Military and economic support from the West were important in that respect, but so too was the intelligence function underlying the overt programme of resistance to Russian aggression. Hence, initiatives like the one involving Harry Stone.

  Hende
rson thought about that, sighed and shook his head. Harry Stone might be disillusioned and lying out there in the long grass, but there was still plenty of work to be done by somebody. He picked up the phone and started making the calls that he hoped would ultimately result in Harry Stone coming in from the cold.

  Over the next few hours, he found out quite a lot.

  First, the Erickson woman had been seconded from Danish Intelligence to work in the same NATO team as Stone. She and Stone had been working together for some time, infiltrating one of the big militia units fighting in the Donbass.

  Obviously not easy work, and agents could grow very close in such circumstances. Henderson nodded with understanding. He had wondered why Stone should come out of hiding to seek the woman.

  Second, Erickson had been abducted a month ago in Kiev by persons unknown. No one knew why. No messages had been received from whoever was responsible. Case officers were working on it in Brussels, as well as in Kiev. And no doubt in Copenhagen as well, Henderson thought. You never forgot your agents, even if they had been seconded elsewhere.

  It seemed likely Stone had guessed that something like this had happened. Abduction, assassination or something else nasty. That would be why he was so worried. It made him wonder about Erickson’s role in what Stone had been doing.

  The final problem Henderson made some progress with was Stone’s current location. GCHQ had placed him. Not exactly, but near enough.

  The news had made him smile with delight. ‘Gotcha!’ he chortled. There was no one there to hear.

  Chapter Ten

  Harry Stone’s cabin, June 2018.

  Harry had known something bad must have happened. It was the only explanation. And the news was worrying, but it could have been worse. He had been steeling himself against that very possibility. So, awful as it was, he was almost relieved to hear what Henderson had to say. At least she was alive.

  His brain started doing high-speed calculations. There was a lot to compute.

  ‘You have no idea who took her?’

  ‘I’m sorry. No, I don’t.’

  ‘Tell me again how it happened.’

  ‘My sources say she was grabbed by up to six hooded men as she left the flat in Kiev where she was staying. As soon as she set foot on the pavement, she was bundled into one of two waiting cars and driven away at high speed. The eyewitnesses could say no more than that.’

  ‘And no demands have been made?’

  ‘No. So far nothing has been heard from the people who abducted her. Presumably that will change.’

  Or not, Harry thought grimly. It depended on their intentions. He had few doubts about who was responsible, but he didn’t know if they intended to trade or to punish. Either way, it meant he had an even bigger problem.

  ‘You’d better come in, Harry. You’ve had a good rest. Come on in now. Let’s try to get everything sorted.’

  Harry shook his head, though Henderson couldn’t see him do it. No way was he going to do that.

  ‘I told you. I’ve resigned, retired.’

  ‘So you said.’

  ‘Have you discovered what went wrong in Slovakia?’ Harry asked. ‘Do you know who leaked news of the meeting?’

  ‘Not yet. We’re still working on it.’

  ‘Let me know when you have. Then we can talk. In the meantime, keep away from me.’

  ‘We can provide protection, Harry.’

  ‘Keep the hell away from me! I don’t want any of your lot anywhere near. I’ll sort this myself.’

  ‘We need that information, Harry. We need it badly.’

  ‘You’ll get it. But not until the leak is plugged.’

  ‘Harry, be reasonable. If people are coming for you — as they almost certainly are — you need help. You can’t handle everything yourself. Let me—’

  Harry switched the phone off. Then he sat for a minute or two, thinking it through again. He was still right, he decided. This was something he would be better off tackling himself. In fact, there was no other way it could be done. Involvement by the department would only muddy the waters and make things worse.

  Petrov would have ordered the abduction, just as he had organised the attack on the meeting in Starý Smokovec. He would have been livid when the package disappeared and wouldn’t have been in any doubt about who was responsible. Now he would want the package back and to see him dead — after as much suffering as it was possible to inflict. That was his way.

  Now that he had learned what had happened to Johanne, Harry knew what he had to do. It was a bleak prospect. Even to hope to get her released, he needed to offer up the information he had stolen — and himself.

  But there was a balance to be struck, and a conundrum to solve. Johanne was the most important consideration but Henderson did need the information and Harry still wanted to get it to him. Otherwise, it would all have been in vain, a futile waste of time and probably of his own life. It was his job, his responsibility, to see this through and hand the information over. Yet how could he do that without sacrificing Johanne?

  Once he handed the package over, it would soon become known. Either the leak would spring into action again or NATO activity would make it obvious what had happened. Either way, he would have lost his bargaining chip. Petrov would know what had happened and wouldn’t think twice about executing Johanne in retaliation.

  So, he had to find a way of achieving both objectives: getting Johanne released, and passing the information to Henderson without Petrov finding out until it was too late for him to do anything about it.

  As for him, he had no illusions. While he might — just — be able to get Johanne released, he himself had no future. He knew what was in the package. He could hand it back, but the knowledge would still be in his head. So, his head would have to come off as well.

  And that was without even considering Petrov’s thirst for revenge. Whether or not Petrov retrieved the information package, he would want him dead anyway. The betrayal couldn’t be allowed to go unanswered.

  Harry shook his head and sighed. He hadn’t forgotten what had happened in Slovakia either. He wanted Petrov to pay a price for that.

  First things first, though. He would just have to do what he could and take it one step at a time.

  He could do with some help, too. Henderson had been right when he’d said he couldn’t do everything himself. But he needed it to come from a quarter he could trust, not from a source he regarded as suspect.

  When he thought about it, only one name came to mind. At first it seemed fanciful, but however often he rejected and discarded it, that name kept on returning.

  It wasn’t the name of someone in the business, or with whom he had ever worked, but gradually he came to feel it was the right one. It was someone he believed he could trust absolutely and who made his living in ways that demonstrated his highly relevant capabilities.

  He phoned Henderson again and laid it out for him.

  ‘Get me a man called Frank Doy,’ Harry said without preamble. ‘Then I might cooperate.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Risky Point, September 2018.

  It was all a bit much for me. Harry Stone in extremis after a career in the shadows? And who was this man bearing such an extraordinary tale?

  ‘I’d better see some ID before we go any further,’ I suggested.

  Henderson reached into an inner pocket, took out his wallet and extracted a business card that he handed over. It didn’t tell me much. It had his name and a phone number, under the Foreign & Commonwealth Office logo, and that was it. As closely as I studied the card, there was nothing else to see.

  ‘MI5, MI6 or GCHQ?’ I asked, dropping the card on the table.

  ‘We don’t all fit into that structure,’ he told me, rather grandly.

  That was what I had always assumed.

  ‘So, if I call this number, who — or what — will I get?’

  ‘The Foreign & Commonwealth Office switchboard.’

  ‘Then what? How do I confirm your
identity?’

  ‘Ask for the Foreign Secretary’s Personal Assistant. Give them your name and say you are currently with me. They are expecting you to call.’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘Really?’

  ‘I thought you might want to.’

  ‘Well, you got that right. Give me a couple of minutes.’

  ‘Of course.’

  I left him to study the view from the kitchen window while I went upstairs to make the call. First, I checked online to see if he really had given me the FO switchboard number. He had.

  I called. Rather surprisingly, it went as Henderson had said it would. I was put through to someone who had indeed been expecting my call.

  It was confirmed that Henderson was legitimate, and that he was on official business that couldn’t be discussed on an open telephone line. I was asked politely to listen to what he had to say, and then to make up my mind whether or not to help. It was very much hoped that I would. A great deal depended on my answer being positive.

  After I shut the phone down, I stood by the bedroom window for a few moments, thinking through what I had learned so far. It was an extraordinary tale, but I concluded that Henderson was on the level and that I should hear what else he had to say about Harry Stone. To do anything else was unthinkable.

  ‘OK,’ I said, re-joining my visitor. ‘Now that’s out of the way, you can tell me some more.’

  ‘Stone is what you might call a retired spy,’ Henderson said. ‘I say that with great caution because someone in his position can never really retire in the conventional sense. It simply means that he is no longer active.’

  ‘A retired spy, eh?’ I said with a chuckle. ‘Old Harry. Amazing.’

  Yet, somehow, I wasn’t too surprised. Harry had always been set for a life spent doing extraordinary things.