by Zoe Sharp
“But Clay was working for this Garton-Jones chap in Iraq, wasn’t he?”
“Doing straightforward contracting, yes,” I agreed. “But we also think he was part of the crew smuggling antiquities out of the country. Maybe Parris is involved with that side of things.”
“And him both an officer and a gentleman? I’m shocked.”
“He was certainly an officer. I’m not so sure about the gentleman bit. Anyway, they’re usually the worst. Hence the fact they’re clearly skimming.”
“Not having been in the military, I’ll have to take your word on that,” she murmured as we turned out onto the relatively smooth main road again and headed back the way we’d come. “All the former soldiers I’ve dealt with seem to have a strong sense of loyalty to their old comrades, their old unit. Would that be enough to persuade men who’d served under Parris to join him in an enterprise that was totally illegal, do you think?”
“Most people will do just about anything if the money’s right,” I said, “but having served with them, he had a pretty good idea who he could approach in the first place without them turning him in. Men who felt they owed him something.”
“Such as standing by them after they’d been accused of rape?”
I looked at the bleakness of the moors through the streaked side glass. The rain was now down to a miserable drizzle, herding low cloud and mist along with it.
“Yeah, something like that. Most COs would have had the men involved RTU’d as soon as the shit hit the fan. That’s returned to their original unit,” I added, anticipating her question. “They don’t want any of the aforementioned shit to stick to their command.”
“Indeed,” Madeleine said gravely. “But not Colonel Parris?”
“No. He stood by them. Even had the gall to tell me the needs of the many outweighed those of the few, or some such, like that made it all OK.”
“Where is that quote from originally?”
“Besides Mr. Spock in Star Trek? I’ve no idea.”
Sean would have known. Or would have once, anyway. He had a mind for odd facts and trivia.
Before . . .
Something he’d said in Hackett’s house in Madaba chewed at a corner of my mind, irritating as a dog with a squeaky toy. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. I shook my head, like that was going to free it.
“What?” Madeleine asked, glancing across.
“Not sure. Something Sean said in Jordan . . .” I rubbed my eyes, let my hands drop in frustration as I swore under my breath.
“Don’t worry. It will come back to you when you least expect it.”
“Or when it’s too late to make use of. I’m constantly two bloody steps behind Sean when I need to be one step ahead of him.”
“I can’t help you there. He asked me to track down Hackett—and not to put you on his trail—but I haven’t heard from him since he went to Iraq.”
“What do you think he’s up to?”
“He never confided in me, Charlie.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“Well, I don’t think for a moment he’s gone off the rails and is on some kind of Mafioso vendetta,” she said. “I think he’s . . . confused about the past and suspects there was more to it than he knew—even before there were parts he couldn’t remember.”
A snatch of conversation in Hackett’s villa came back to me in a vivid rush: me telling Sean that if I’d wanted to go after the men who’d attacked me, I would have done it already. And his reply:
“It depends—on if you knew the right one to go after.”
I recounted his words to Madeleine. She frowned as she drove, automatically slowing down a little as she processed the possible meanings.
“It sounds like he’d found out—who to go after, I mean,” she said at last.
“But did he mean Hackett, as the ringleader, or Parris, as the instigator of the cover-up that followed?”
“And also the architect of Sean’s own career downfall, don’t forget.”
“I don’t suppose Sean asked you to track down the current whereabouts of Parris as well, did he?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do it now.”
She hit speed dial on her smartphone, in its hands-free cradle on the dashboard. The line rang twice before being answered with brisk efficiency. I listened with half an ear while Madeleine asked the well-spoken young man back at her office to get onto the trail of my old CO. When she ended the call, she glanced across at me.
“Should we have warned him, do you think?”
“Who?”
“Donalson—that Sean might be coming for him.”
I shook my head. “If Sean isn’t working his way through my attackers—which neither of us believes he is—then what purpose would it have served, other than to put the wind up him?”
“I would have thought you might have appreciated making him . . . suffer, just a little.”
I shook my head. “I don’t feel anything toward Donalson. Not anymore. He was a cocky creep, but I think those days are long gone. Even if I’d been intending to kill him, having seen the state he’s in, I probably would have let him be.”
“Then you do feel something toward him,” Madeleine said. “Pity.”
FIFTY-THREE
MADELEINE OFFERED TO DROP ME AT MY PARENTS’ PLACE IN Cheshire, but I didn’t have the energy for that kind of confrontation. Instead, I opted to accompany her back down to her headquarters in Kings Langley on the outskirts of London, just outside the M25 orbital ring road.
I’d been there before, back when Sean ran the agency. It still occupied the same modern industrial unit on the edge of town. Madeleine had improved the corporate branding, if the revamped logo and interior design were anything to go by. I guessed she’d probably had a shake-up of the staff as well. Not all of them would have welcomed a female boss—particularly one who came from logistics and cybersecurity rather than the field.
When we walked into the back office, one of the first people I saw was Luisa Dawson, now minus the sling on her arm. She was wearing dark wool slacks and a cream blouse that was smart without being flouncy. Quite a change from the last time I’d seen her, travel-worn and injured at the airport in Baghdad.
She got to her feet and stood awkwardly for a moment, unsure whether to keep her distance or hug me.
I gave her a friendly nod and held out a hand to shake, forestalling anything more intimate. “Good to see you,” I said. “How’s the shoulder?”
“Mending. How about you?”
“Mending,” I echoed. I glanced at Madeleine. “How long have you been working here?”
It was Madeleine who answered for her. “Since she got back from Iraq. I can always use a fluent Arabic speaker—here in the office until she can get back out there again.”
“I’m glad,” I said, and meant it.
Dawson flashed me a quick grin. “I’ve been looking into this Colonel Parris bloke for you. He’s—”
Whatever she was about to say was lost when the door to Madeleine’s private office opened and a good-looking, rather smooth Indian guy stuck his head out. “Ah, you’re back, ma’am,” he said. I recognized the well-bred voice she’d phoned on the way back from Saddleworth Moor and pegged him as ex-Sandhurst military academy. “I have an American lady on hold for you—says her name is Hamilton. Do you want to take it, or shall I run interference?”
“You could try,” I said, “but she has a habit of getting through sooner or later. Try not to let her get up to full ramming speed.”
“Yeah,” Dawson added. “She usually has a black ops team in tow who shoot first and don’t bother with the questions.”
“It’s all right,” Madeleine told him. “I’ll take it—I don’t think refusing to speak with the CIA would be good for business. Would you make some coffee for our . . . guest?”
He nearly bowed as he withdrew, slick as a country house butler. I turned back to Dawson, got as far as opening my mouth when Madeleine int
errupted.
“Actually, I think you better sit in on this, Charlie.”
“In that case, Luisa should, too,” I said. “If you’re talking to Hamilton, we’ve both been on the receiving end of her hospitality.”
Madeleine shrugged. “Go through and make yourselves comfortable.”
Sean’s old office had changed in both décor and layout. Madeleine had brought in slightly more classic furniture that wouldn’t date so quickly, but she’d stuck to muted colors to put her potential clients at ease. The old conference table had been replaced by sofas grouped around a large flat-screen TV. It was more like we were about to watch a movie than receive a briefing.
Madeleine went to the laptop on her desk and picked up a remote for the TV. When the screen came to life, Aubrey Hamilton was sitting facing a webcam. The screen was big enough that she was larger than life-size, which was faintly unnerving. As ever, she was in black. It made her face appear very stark, almost disembodied, as the limitations of the camera struggled with the contrast. From the utilitarian background, I’d say she was on a navy vessel.
“Ms. Hamilton,” Madeleine greeted her, sitting down at the opposite end of the sofa I’d chosen. “What can we do for you?”
“The Dolphin was a bust,” Hamilton said without preamble. “Legitimate goods, all accounted for and documented up the wazoo.”
“Oh . . . arse,” I murmured.
“Yeah, that about sums it up. Still, at least our sailor boys and girls got to play with their big guns.”
“So that answers that question,” I said. “When we got there, Hackett must have already taken anything incriminating out of the safe, so it was left open by design—not accident.”
“Uh-uh. Not necessarily. I’m still not ruling out that your pal Meyer had time to open and remove whatever he needed before you got there.”
Both Madeleine and I started to protest, but Hamilton held up a hand. “I’m not ruling it in, either. Just putting it out there as something I have to consider.”
I nodded, then looked up sharply and asked, “How did you find me here, by the way? Did I swallow some kind of tracking bug in that last pot of coffee you ordered in Amman?”
She laughed, a husky bark of sound. “Nothing so high-tech. I called your boss. He told me Ms. Rimmington had arranged to pick you up soon as you landed in the UK.”
“I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse.”
“Occupational hazard. Get used to it.”
Almost as soon as I mentioned the word “coffee,” Madeleine’s assistant reappeared with a tray laden with a cafetière and all the associated bits and pieces. He put it down on the low table in front of the sofas and left again. Even over a webcam, Hamilton looked at it longingly.
“OK, so if the Dolphin was the bad news,” I said only half jokingly as I poured the coffee, “I don’t suppose you have any good news?”
“Don’t know if you’d class it as good or bad,” Hamilton said. “The Russians you ran into in Kuwait City and again in Madaba? Woźniak managed to snag some intel from immigration in both countries on a group of Russian guys who fit the profile and were in the right places at the right times. I’ve emailed over a couple of pictures and their passport details, although I doubt they’re using the names they were born with.”
I remembered Parker’s explanation of Kuznetsov as “Smith” but just said, “Oh?”
“Well, you reckoned they were Russian ex–Special Forces, the equivalent of our Navy SEALs?”
“Or our Special Boat Service,” Dawson put in, but Hamilton barely missed a beat.
“Well, the names kinda follow—Griorovich, Levchenko, Panteleyev, Tributs, Ushakov. All names of Russian naval vessels. The Admiral Ushakov is a Kirov-class battle cruiser. You can thank the fact I’m on a ship surrounded by people who know the Russian navy backwards for that one.”
Over on the desk, Madeleine’s computer chirruped. She moved over to it, hit a couple of keys, and a moment later the printer whirred to life.
“The Admiral Kuznetsov, by the way, is an aircraft carrier,” Dawson said quietly.
Kuznetsov. The man I’d killed in Basra the day Dawson had busted her shoulder. The day I’d been shown Clay’s body and had worried that Sean really might have been responsible.
I looked up to find Hamilton’s oversize image peering at us. “I don’t have a Kuznetsov listed going into Amman,” she said. “What am I missing?”
“He was part of an ambush on the contractor I was working for in southern Iraq,” Dawson explained. She indicated her shoulder. “They planted an IED and then opened fire on us. I snapped my collarbone, but Charlie managed to take out one of the shooters—this guy, Kuznetsov.”
“Hmm, funny you didn’t mention anything about wasting this guy when we spoke before,” Hamilton said. “Slip your mind?”
“Ah well, maybe I’m just naturally modest.”
“Yeah, or maybe you’re just full of—”
Madeleine cut her off by dropping the printouts into my lap. I flipped through two or three that I vaguely recognized before one jumped straight out at me. I turned the picture around so Hamilton could see it.
“That’s the one—Ushakov,” I said. “Definitely the guy who warned us off in Kuwait.”
“You sure?”
“One hundred percent. I never forget anyone who punches me.”
“I’ll be sure to tell that to Woźniak so he has time to start running.”
“Why run? He’ll only die tired.”
She snorted. “Damn, I was right. I definitely should have hired you.”
“Too late,” I said. “OK, so we know where this Ushakov was, but where did he come from? And where did he go afterwards?”
“Sofia,” Hamilton said. “It’s an easy hop from there to anywhere in Russia.”
“Sofia, as in Bulgaria?” Dawson asked suddenly.
Hamilton made an impatient noise. “How many others do you know?”
“Well, apart from one in New Mexico, there are at least a couple in old Mexico and three in Cuba,” Dawson said evenly. “As well as more in Moldova, Sweden, Mozambique, Portugal—”
“OK, OK, so you’re a smart-ass. I get the picture,” Hamilton snapped. “Yes, goddammit, Sofia, Bulgaria. Why?”
Dawson flicked her eyes to Madeleine as if seeking permission, then reached for the folder she’d brought in with her. “Because earlier today the boss asked us to track down one Colonel John Parris—former commanding officer of the Special Forces regiment Charlie was training with.”
“Same one as Michael Clay and James Hackett?”
“That’s the one. Turns out Parris wasn’t hard to find. He handed his kit in three years ago and now runs his own private security firm. The word in the industry is that he’s good, but not too fussy who he contracts to if the money is right. And as of this moment, he’s working for a fairly dubious guy who has a place in the mountains, not far from Borovets, Bulgaria.”
“What do you know about the guy who’s hired him?”
“Not much as yet,” Dawson said. “I just had a couple of pictures emailed through and was about to start a search to try and identify him.”
She passed across a color print for me to show to the webcam, as I was nearest. Out of habit, I glanced at it.
And froze.
It wasn’t just the sight of Colonel Parris, to the left of the shot, in civilian clothing but unmistakably military in bearing. It wasn’t even the other obvious mercenaries arranged in a loose diamond formation around their principal.
It was the principal himself.
“Charlie?”
I looked up to find Madeleine staring at me with concern. I cleared my throat.
“Unfortunately, I know exactly who this is,” I told her. “And so do you.”
FIFTY-FOUR
“HIS NAME IS GREGOR VENKO,” MADELEINE SAID. “CAME TO prominence during the Balkan Wars of the ’90s, although nobody was ever quite sure whose side he was on. He supplied j
ust about anything to just about anybody—providing they had the money—and made a considerable fortune doing so.”
“Dare I ask how you and Charlie came to know this guy?” Looming from the flat-screen, Hamilton’s narrowed eyes flicked between the two of us.
“Madeleine never met him, and I only encountered him professionally, so to speak,” I answered. “It was in Germany, a few years ago. I made the mistake of saving the life of Gregor’s son, Ivan.”
“Mistake?”
“It prevented an innocent girl dying, which would have been the outcome had anything happened to the boy,” Madeleine put in, sending me a disapproving glance. “And to be fair, Charlie, you didn’t know at the time that it was a mistake.”
“On some level I did, as soon as I first laid eyes on him. Even at barely twenty, Ivan was a nasty piece of work. I doubt he’s developed much of a conscience since then. Gregor was old school. At least with him you felt there was some kind of honor system at work.”
“So how did Venko Senior react to what you did?” Hamilton asked. “He feel he owed you one?”
I shrugged. “He told me he wouldn’t forget,” I said. “At the time it sounded more like a threat than a promise.”
And then he’d sent me an extraordinarily generous gift—a fact I did not feel inclined to reveal to Hamilton. Or Madeleine, for that matter. It felt too close to accepting a bribe.
“Send me what you have on this guy,” Hamilton ordered. “I’ll get my people to work up a full packet.”
Her brisk tone was enough to make even Madeleine bridle.
“I’m sure my people are more than capable,” she said pleasantly.
“Of that I have no doubt. But you’re doing this pro bono. I have the Federal Reserve behind me—for the moment, at least—not to mention access to NSA files and satellite tracking. Why not take advantage?”
“All right,” Madeleine said at last. “Would I be out of order to ask what you intend to do with the information?”
Hamilton paused a moment, as if considering. “We appear to have lost both Meyer and Hackett, but we assume they’ve left Jordan without alerting the authorities. We believe Hackett is involved with transporting stolen antiquities out of the region, but we don’t know what route he’s taking, or where he’s headed. However, finding out he may have been working for his former CO, and that Parris is, in turn, working for this gangster, Venko, it gives us someplace to start looking.”