Operative 66 : A Novel

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Operative 66 : A Novel Page 28

by McDermott, Andy


  ‘Hey!’

  An angry shout from behind. Stone turned. A man with flowing silver hair strode down the lawn towards him. ‘What are you doing? Get off my property! I’m calling the police!’ He raised his phone.

  ‘I am the police!’ Stone yelled back. ‘Go back inside!’

  The house’s owner was not deterred. ‘Let’s see some ID, then!’

  ‘Here’s my fucking ID,’ said Stone, pulling out his HK416. The other man fled – though he was already making a call.

  That would complicate things, but right now killing Reeve was his priority. He raised the gun to find his target.

  Reeve swam towards the small boats. Fishermen, catching shellfish or crabs in the bay’s shallows. The commotion on the ship had caught their attention. The nearest man rose to watch his approach. ‘Hey!’ Reeve shouted. ‘Help! I need help!’

  The fisherman hurriedly started his outboard and swung his craft around. Reeve kept swimming to meet it. The engine slowed, the boat drifting closer. Its occupant stretched out a hand—

  Sharp cracks as wood splintered under sudden impacts.

  An assault rifle clattered. Stone was firing at him from a mansion’s garden. More rounds pounded the boat. Reeve dived, swimming under the keel. He surfaced on the other side. A flat thwap from above, followed by a scream. The fisherman fell into the water with blood streaming from his shoulder.

  Reeve could do nothing to help him. His own survival took priority. He grabbed the boat’s gunwale and pulled himself higher. The craft tipped towards him under his weight – acting as a shield. Stone kept shooting. The wooden hull was thick, but some rounds still punched through. As soon as it rolled level again, it would take on water.

  Reeve didn’t care. It just had to carry him far enough. Supporting himself on his right arm, he strained for the outboard with his left. The throttle lever was mounted on the tiller. He found it and squeezed. The engine rasped, the propeller churning through the waves.

  The boat immediately swung around, exposing him to the shore. He forced the tiller over to compensate. More bullets smacked against the hull, and now the stern. Reeve held on, dragged through the water – then hauled himself aboard. The boat rolled back upright. Spouts of seawater erupted through the bullet holes. Staying low, he aimed the boat towards Poole. Full throttle, and the boat powered across the bay. The gunfire continued, but impacts on water quickly outnumbered those on wood.

  Then the shooting stopped.

  Reeve kept his head down. He was beyond Stone’s effective range, but Flynn might be on the other headland. A sniper rifle could easily reach him. He held course for a couple of minutes before risking a look back.

  No shots came at him. He was safe.

  For now. He still had to get away once he reached shore. And then he had to get back to London.

  But he was back home.

  Ready to begin his new mission: hunt down Craig Parker.

  CHAPTER 47

  The Eurostar pulled into St Pancras station. Connie wearily joined the crush of disembarking passengers. Her journey from Avignon, stopping overnight in Paris, had been fraught, paranoia her only companion. Were the French police looking for her? Were more killers on her tail?

  Her tension didn’t ease as she left the train. She was on home soil, but so were SC9. Would someone be waiting for her?

  Only one gate was open. No choice but to go through it. A lot of police around. Was that normal for the Eurostar? She didn’t know. All she could do was keep walking. Everyone slowed as they neared the gate. More cops stood at it, all armed. Fear returned. She fought the urge to push through the crowd and run. Just keep going, stay calm, keep going . . .

  She reached the gate. Stony faces under black baseball caps watched the passengers exit. Were they staring at her? She didn’t dare look around, lowering her head. Keep moving, almost through—

  ‘Constantia Jones.’

  Raw terror at the sound of her name. She looked up. Two armed cops – and a civilian standing between them. A man, fine side-parted blond hair, intense blue eyes. They were fixed unblinkingly upon her. ‘Constantia Jones,’ he repeated, one hand gesturing at her. His other arm was in a sling.

  Her knees almost buckled, nausea swilling in her stomach. It took all her effort just to stay upright. ‘Y-yes?’

  The blond man held up an identity card. A blue logo with the crown and portcullis of the British government. Beside it, the words Security Service; MI5 was appended on the line below. The man’s picture was on the card, but in her fear she couldn’t register his name. She looked back at him. His expression was cold – no, worse than that. It was as if he had no feelings at all.

  He spoke. His voice was calm, urbane – yet frightening. ‘Come with me, please. We need to talk to you.’

  ‘What about?’

  Now a tiny hint of emotion flickered across his face. It was not a pleasant one. ‘Alex Reeve.’

  Reeve himself was on another train, heading towards London.

  He had made shore near a park on Poole’s outskirts. Once clear, he walked purposefully towards the centre. The incessant rain meant his soaked clothing drew little notice. He found shelter and took stock. Jammer’s phone case was thankfully waterproof. Everything else was wet. Luckily, many of his sterling banknotes were polymer rather than paper.

  He bought a coat and new, dry trousers and trainers in an outdoors shop. He also bought a baseball hat, more to cover his face than keep it dry. A pharmacy provided painkillers and replacement dressings for his injured arm. Once changed, he searched for transport. Rather than go to Poole’s railway station, he took a cab to nearby Bournemouth. The odds that Operatives would be watching for him there were lower.

  Now, he was halfway through the two-hour journey. Wet green countryside rolled past. He used the time to think about his objective. Deducing that Parker was the real traitor was one thing. Finding him was something else.

  Where was he, and what was he doing?

  Reeve’s mind returned to Mordencroft. Not to when Parker had been waiting for him, armed and ready. Before that. On the way to Maxwell’s office. Parker had said he was carrying out background research for his first assignment. Maybe he hadn’t seen Parker while tracking down Maxwell because Parker hadn’t been there. If he was on a mission, he would have other priorities.

  There had been a picture of someone on his screen. A female politician. Elektra Curtis, Reeve remembered: the woman Connie admired . . .

  A progressive. The antithesis of the British establishment, wanting to overturn the old guard. The kind of person Scott had moved to the top of his enemies list.

  He used the phone to find out more about her. Words like ‘firebrand’ and ‘radical’ appeared regularly in the search result summaries. She was young, passionate, charismatic – and an expert at utilising social media. The hashtag #MakeThemPay was hers. ‘Them’ included offshore tax dodgers, exploitative bosses, corporate polluters, greedy bankers, lying newspapers. Targets to excite the ordinary citizen – and horrify the establishment elite. Small wonder she aroused support and vitriol in equal amounts.

  What doubtless concerned Scott was that the vitriol wasn’t sticking. Reeve knew friendly media outlets were a first line of attack against ‘troublemakers’. SC9 was the deadliest instrument in the security state’s toolbox, but there were others. Coordinated smear campaigns would squash low-level problems. Few people could withstand concentrated attacks by the more rabid parts of the press. Stress and fear would quickly force them to cave. Never mind that their reputations might be unjustly destroyed. What mattered was that criticism of the state had been neutralised.

  Elektra Curtis, however, was having none of it. Clearly nothing illegal or immoral had been uncovered about her past. That would have been front and centre in a media ‘monstering’. Instead, criticism focused on salacious trivia and fearmongering insul
ts. Dated insults, at that. Nobody of her generation’s knees jerked to terms like red or socialist. If anything, she had embraced them. Her message was that forty years of fundamentally the same politics had broken the country. Now, it was time to break those politics – and the powers behind them.

  No wonder Scott despised her. But enough to set SC9 upon her? If he did, and Parker had been assigned the task . . . how would he do it?

  How would Reeve do it?

  Uncover the method, and find the man.

  He read more, building up a target profile. Young, from a deprived background, overcoming adversity through intelligence and willpower. Active in her community, champion of underdogs of all stripes. Quick-witted, quotable, but always on-message. That message was: she would never sell out. #MakeThemPay.

  Martyring Curtis would be the last thing Scott wanted. So no overt assassination. An ‘accident’ instead. She was the face of a movement, one of Scott’s ‘keystones’ to be taken out. If she could be discredited in the process, the whole edifice would fall. Not drugs; she was openly pro-decriminalisation, so no chance for charges of hypocrisy. Corruption would be preferable. ‘Proof’ would emerge that she had taken payments from some business she supposedly opposed. For all her words, she had been working within the system. She knew how the game was really played; everything else was just for show.

  That would be the background. What about the actual killing itself? Hit and run? Too messy, too many questions raised. Curtis could be the only person involved. Something like a carbon monoxide leak or a fall down stairs. That was what Reeve himself would do—

  He realised with a flash that he was completely, utterly wrong.

  That was what Scott expected Parker to do. Deal with a problem so carefully that nobody even realises it’s been dealt with. Sometimes SC9 sent blunt messages: that was what Operatives like Stone were for. But political issues, especially at home, needed to be handled subtly.

  Except Parker was a traitor. He was working against SC9 – against Britain. If he publicly exposed SC9’s existence and methods . . .

  Scott could have been right about the traitor’s intent. Just wrong about his identity. Murdering a progressive Member of Parliament, then exposing SC9, would not just destroy the agency. It would be a bomb beneath the entire British establishment.

  Parker would assassinate his target in full public view. Before as many cameras as possible. And then . . . he would tell them why.

  A new search on the phone. What were Curtis’s upcoming public engagements?

  The leading result leapt out at him.

  Curtis had angered the government by challenging its policies on the Islamic Republic of Iran. The official line was that Iran was a menace that had to be contained. By sanctions, pressure on its allies, military action. Curtis, however, believed in opening dialogue. To that end, she intended to meet the Iranian ambassador.

  The government, and most of the press, was furious. But they couldn’t stop her. The Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at King’s College in London was holding an event. The ambassador would be a guest. So would she. She would both raise her profile, and give the government the finger.

  The event was that very evening.

  Reeve leaned back, staring at the little screen. Was that where Parker intended to strike?

  If so, he had to be there as well. To prove his innocence, he had to stop Parker – and save his target.

  The train would reach London in less than an hour. He began a new search. He had to find out all he could about King’s College.

  Internally, Connie was close to tears. But she used all her remaining strength to maintain a poker face. She sat in a stark interrogation room at St Pancras’s security headquarters. An armed officer stood guard. The MI5 man, whose name was Locke, had taken a phone call. From his tight-lipped reaction, it had not been good news. Something to do with Alex? Rather than talk in front of her, he left.

  Now Locke returned. He got straight to the point. ‘Do you have relatives or friends in Poole?’

  ‘What?’ she replied, confused and tired. ‘No, I don’t. I’ve been telling you for the past hour, I don’t know where Alex is.’ He had already extracted the story of how she met him, and events in France. Now she just wanted everything to be over.

  Locke stared icily at her in unnerving silence. She tried to match his gaze, but quickly withered, looking down. At that moment, he spoke again. ‘You can go.’

  She was startled. ‘What?’

  ‘I said you can go. We’re finished here.’ He walked out.

  Connie looked at her guard, expecting some trick. But he was just as surprised. ‘Okay, I . . . I guess you can go, ma’am.’ He stood back to let her leave.

  Even on the way out, she still expected a double-cross. But nothing happened. As she emerged into the station, she scrutinised everyone nearby. Was she going to be followed? But nobody paid her any attention.

  Unsettled, bewildered, she headed for the Tube. If anyone was following her, they would be disappointed. The only place she could go was home.

  Locke waited in a side office for Connie to leave, then made a phone call. Maxwell answered. ‘Jones has left,’ he told him.

  ‘Okay,’ Maxwell replied. ‘John, Deirdre and Mark are on their way back to London.’

  ‘What about the search for Reeve?’

  ‘Local police are handling it. I doubt they’ll find him. He’s gone.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Good question. Did you get anything else out of Connie?’

  ‘No. And I don’t believe she knows his location. She was tired, upset – angry. To quote her, “He’s ruined my life.” They did not part on good terms.’

  ‘Explains why they took different routes home. She probably couldn’t handle being with him any more. Not after what happened in Provence.’ A pause, then: ‘Did she in any way imply that she knew about SC9?’

  Locke’s eyes narrowed. ‘I believe she knows more than she was willing to say. She never mentioned us by name, though. Either Reeve didn’t tell her, or she’s clever enough not to reveal it to us.’

  ‘I agree; she probably is hiding something. The question is, is she scared enough to keep it to herself?’

  ‘Are we going to take action against her?’

  ‘No . . . not yet, anyway. We’ll keep an eye on her. Not a stakeout,’ Maxwell added. ‘I doubt Alex will go back to her flat. But GCHQ can monitor her communications. If she says anything suspicious, I’ll reconsider.’

  ‘So what do you want me to do now?’

  ‘Now?’ Maxwell said, with a sigh. ‘Until we get a lead on Alex, there’s not much anyone can do. Facial recognition is running on all gateways to London. We need to be ready to move the moment he’s spotted.’

  Connie finished the long, wet trudge to the house. She unlocked the front door and checked the mail. Several letters, nothing interesting. They could wait. She was about to go to her flat when she heard a noise. She looked up. Jaz peered from her door. ‘Hi,’ said Connie, waving.

  ‘Hi,’ came the hesitant reply. Connie was about to ask if she was okay when she withdrew. The door closed, lock clacking.

  That was odd. Had she been expecting someone else? Maybe her ex had threatened trouble again. A shrug, and she went into her own flat.

  Everything was as she had left it. Yet even without Alex there, it seemed somehow . . . smaller.

  That made her wonder what had happened to him. Don’t start thinking about him, she warned herself. Her kindness had been repaid with a wrecked car and an MI5 interrogation. And beyond that . . .

  The image of the gun swinging towards her came unbidden to her mind. She shuddered, trying to stop the mental playback. What came next would, she was sure, haunt her nightmares for years. As a nurse, she had often seen the gory end results of violence. Witnessing the actual moment was something else
entirely.

  She needed something to occupy her mind. It was getting late, and she was hungry and thirsty. The fridge was sadly devoid of wine. Damn. Tea would have to do.

  Ingredients were thrown together to make a meal. The resulting vegetarian chilli wouldn’t win any culinary stars, but at least it was filling. And cheap. She needed a new car, so no more calling out for pizza. She flopped on to the sofa. A deep sigh. God. What the hell had happened to her life? But at least now it was over . . .

  A sound from the main hall. Someone unlocking the front door. Philip, she guessed; Jaz was already home. Should she go and say hello—

  Oh, Christ – Alex still had his passport. Connie got up. She had to break the bad news. She went to her door.

  It opened before she reached it.

  She froze in surprise. She had locked it. But a large, bearded man pushed into the flat. He had a key in his hand. ‘Hey, hey!’ she cried, suddenly afraid again. ‘What are you doing? Get out!’

  He said nothing, merely giving her a menacing look. Another man, just as big, followed him in. Now truly scared, she backed away.

  A third man appeared. He was older, wearing a smart suit. Neat silver hair was swept above a hard face, lines as deep as tree bark. His eyes gave Connie another chill of fear. They were as cold and pitiless as the MI5 man’s. He stopped between the two other men and stared at her.

  ‘Who are you?’ she demanded, finding some spark of courage.

  ‘I am your landlord, Miss Jones.’ His accent was Eastern European. Albanian? She thought she recognised it from patients at the hospital. ‘Valon Bato. At your service.’ He smiled, without warmth.

  ‘Oh. But – but that still doesn’t mean you can just walk in here,’ Connie protested. ‘You’re supposed to give me advance warning of any inspections.’

  ‘I am not here to inspect the property. I am here to see you.’ He stepped closer. ‘I need to talk to you about Alex Reeve.’

  She made an exasperated sound. ‘I don’t know where he is. Last time I saw—’

 

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