by Chris Ryan
Once more a smile spread across the older man’s lined face. Sam shut his eyes and as he did so, his brother’s words echoed in his mind. They’ll tell you things, Sam. Things about me. Don’t forget that you’re my brother. Don’t believe them. And he remembered the red-light runners, butchered in their beds by the Regiment’s weapons, and how easily one of those could have been Jacob.
‘You’re insane,’ he told the old man. ‘You’re totally fucking insane.’
Bland’s gaze flickered over to where Toby was standing. Clearly he didn’t like being spoken to like this in front of a subordinate, but if he was angry he managed to keep a check on it.
‘What if I were to tell you, Sam, that the red-light runners were being trained not by MI5, but by a foreign intelligence agency?’
‘Who?’
‘I, ah, I think I might keep that information to myself for the time being, Sam. Though if you think about it, I’m sure you would come to the same conclusion as me.’
‘Then why did you kill Clare’s contact?’
‘We didn’t, Sam. We didn’t need to. He was, ah, taken care of by the time we reached him.’
‘Who by?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘But he told Clare he was working for Five.’
‘Indeed he did, Sam. Indeed he did. Because that was what he believed.’
Sam’s eyes narrowed as he tried to work out the implications of what Bland was saying.
‘You see, Sam,’ Bland continued, ‘Miss Corbett’s red-light runners are exactly what she thought they were. With one difference. They thought they were working for MI5. They thought they were patriots. But they weren’t, Sam. They were stooges. They had been duped.’
His words rang around the room.
‘With the red-light runners trained, primed and reinserted into the UK, their handlers had a secret network of operatives willing to do their bidding. We have no idea how many of them there are out there. Tens? Hundreds? Just waiting to be activated. Just waiting to be given the order.’
As he spoke, he did not take his eyes from Sam.
‘Your brother is involved, Sam, in some way. I don’t think I need to tell you what sort of threat this poses to the national security. So if you have any information about Jacob, I recommend that you tell me. Now.’
Bland took a step back and put his hands behind his back. There was an air of finality to his movements. He had said his piece. It was up to Sam now.
Slowly, Sam pulled his backpack towards him. Opening it up at the buckles he fished his hand inside. His fingers brushed against the hard contours of the laptop he’d found. He felt his mouth go dry. The last thing he wanted was for that computer to fall into the Firm’s hands. The pack was staying with him, no matter what. Next to the machine was the small digital camera which he had used to photograph the deceased. He pulled it out and handed it to Gabriel Bland.
‘Pictures,’ he said shortly. ‘Of everyone we killed. They’re your red-light runners. Jacob wasn’t with them. Final answer.’
Bland narrowed his eyes as Sam stood up and slung the pack over his shoulder. ‘I’d like to be excused,’ he demanded brazenly.
Bland appeared to consider that for a moment. You could see the wheels ticking in his mind. Finally, he nodded over at Toby, a short, instructive nod. Returning his attention to Sam, he smiled and held out one arm.
‘Please,’ he murmured politely, as though he were the maître d’ in a fine restaurant ushering his guest to the exit.
Sam gave him an unfriendly look, then turned and left. As he walked back out into the Kremlin he heard, but did not see, Toby closing the door behind him.
*
There was silence in the briefing room. Toby Brookes knew better than to speak out of turn.
He remained by the door, looking at his boss. Bland was a cold fish, Brookes knew that better than most. Full of fancy words and exquisite manners, but a total shit when he wanted to be, and a temper to match. But he had the ear of the important people – including the chief of the SIS – and was as much a part of the furniture at Legoland as, well, the furniture. As far as Brookes knew, he had no family to speak of. Christ, the bastard never even seemed to go home, and he expected the same of his staff. Brookes had barely seen his wife for two weeks, not since all the business with Clare Corbett erupted. Carry on like this and he wouldn’t have a wife much longer, but there was no point saying that to Gabriel Bland.
Brookes coughed, not because he needed to, but to remind Bland that he was actually still there. One of his boss’s eagle-like eyebrows shot up.
‘What do you think, Toby?’ he asked quietly. ‘I would very much value your opinion.’
Brookes blinked. Bland had never asked his opinion. Never. The old man avoided his eye, and in a flash of intuition Brookes realised that he was unsure of himself.
He stuttered.
‘You think I am foolish, giving any information at all to a man like Sam Redman.’
‘His talents don’t lie between the ears, sir, if you understand my meaning.’ Instantly, Brookes regretted his comment. He should have flattered the boss. That was what he wanted to hear.
‘I most certainly do understand your meaning, Toby. I most certainly do.’ Bland’s eyes became lost in thought once more. ‘Sam Redman is a man who thinks with his emotions, and with his biceps; not his mind, Toby. We’ve given him enough to be going on with. I predict that he will do whatever it takes to locate his brother. And we must locate his brother. That much is clear.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Brookes agreed obligingly.
Bland nodded his head, then looked directly at Brookes. ‘See to it that he is followed. Category one target. Phone taps, trails, the works. Don’t concern yourself with legalities – I’ll clear it all with the chief. I want our best people on it, Toby. And I don’t want them to be seen.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Brookes repeated, before turning to open the door.
‘Toby,’ Bland called. There was a warning in his voice.
He turned.
‘I mean it, Toby. Our best people. This will be the making of you.’ He smiled, a rather sweet, paternal smile. ‘It’s a most important operation, Toby. I just want to make sure you fully appreciate and share my sense of urgency.’
Brookes nodded, not knowing if he was expected to speak.
‘Good,’ Bland said calmly. ‘Good. Now then, I suggest we leave this place. I’ve never liked it much. It smells of men. Most unpleasant. Really most unpleasant.’
And with a sudden speed he walked towards the door. Toby Brookes only just managed to open it in time to let him through.
FOURTEEN
He had driven all day, stopping only to refuel the truck from the canisters of diesel in the back, or to buy fruit from one of the occasional stalls that popped up from nowhere. Whenever he stopped he kept the engine running so that he didn’t have to hotwire it again; and he kept the handgun close to his body in case anyone got any clever ideas.
Now it was evening. He was numb with tiredness. The road stretched out ahead of him, wide and empty. This place seemed to go on for ever and with only his sense of direction to guide him, Jacob Redman experienced many moments of doubt. He knew he needed to travel west and slightly north and, unable to read the road signs and in the absence of maps or any proper navigation gear, he had relied on his reading of the sun during the day and the stars at night. But these were not precise measurements. Distances were long in this part of the world and if he went wrong, he could find himself stranded in an unpopulated part of Kazakhstan with no diesel and a dwindling supply of money. The few notes he had stolen from the guard when he took the truck were enough to buy him a little food, but not nearly enough for fuel. There were a limited number of times he could steal from people before getting caught and he really didn’t want to have to fight his way out of a Kazakh police cell.
Not that there were many people to steal from. In this vast country he could drive for an hour without seeing a soul; when
he did it was frequently just a peasant tending animals in a field. No police, thank God. No army. Not yet.
He glanced at the fuel gauge. Close on empty. He pulled over and jumped down, walking round to the back and opening up. He had kept hold of the empty fuel canisters – four of them, lying on their sides with only the AK-47 for company – on the off chance that he came across a free supply of diesel. But he hadn’t. Only one of them had any of that precious, pungent liquid inside. He heaved it out of the back, undid the screwtop and started pouring it into the truck’s fuel tank. There was a glugging sound, as though the engine was thirstily drinking the fuel. Before long, the last drops had been squeezed out. The canister clattered as he threw it back into the van; Jacob took his place behind the wheel once more and allowed himself to close his eyes. Just for a minute.
He shook himself awake. ‘Damn it,’ he hissed, angry at his lack of self-control. There was no time for sleep; and he had wasted fuel while the engine ticked over. He shook his head and pulled out into the road once more.
It was growing dark now. The sky, which had been blue but dotted with cotton-wool clouds, grew orange. He had left the hemp fields of the Chu Valley far behind and now the surrounding countryside was far more flat. Fields of grassland extended into the distance. Soon they would be parched by the fierce summer months. Summer. But Jacob could not expect to see the greens and yellows of England. That thought came to him with a pang and not for the first time he found himself hankering after home. You could be an exile for any amount of time, he realised, but you never fully grew used to it. There were always moments when you wanted the comforts of home and for Jacob this was one of them.
He pushed that thought from his mind, as he had so many times before. He wasn’t going home now, or any time soon.
A town up ahead. He trundled through. It was indistinguishable from the one where he had picked up the vehicle. A little bigger if anything. On the far side of the outskirts, he pulled over. It was a risk, but he had to check he was on the right track. An elderly man sat outside his house on a low wooden bench. He had the Mongol-looking face indigenous to the region, deeply lined; he wore a winter jumper, despite the fact that it was a warm evening; and he looked at the new arrival with undisguised mistrust. Beside him, tethered to a splintered old post, was a goat. The animal looked a lot sprightlier than its owner.
Jacob had one note left. He pulled it from his back pocket and handed it to the man. The man looked for a moment as though he was going to take great offence, but at the last minute he stretched out a thin, trembling hand and accepted the offer. He secreted the money in the breast pocket of the shirt he was wearing under the jumper, then turned his attention back to Jacob.
‘Baikonur?’ Jacob asked.
At first the old man appeared not to have heard; at least, if he had heard, he pretended not to. So Jacob repeated himself. ‘Baikonur?’
Slowly, the man started to nod. He turned his head looking in the direction Jacob was travelling, then gradually raised his arm and pointed.
‘Baikonur,’ he said in a grizzled voice. His lips receded in on themselves, in the way only the lips of old men can. He pushed himself heavily to his feet and tottered the couple of metres over to where the goat was tethered. He held out a bony hand and the animal nuzzled his fingertips. Everything about his body language indicated that the conversation was over.
That was fine by Jacob. He’d found out what he wanted. He was on the right track. He rushed back to the truck, took his place once more behind the wheel and drove off. With luck, he would have enough fuel. If not, he’d just have to improvise. That didn’t matter. It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last.
He shook his head again and tried to stop his drowsiness from overcoming him.
*
Sam’s mind was ablaze.
Everything Bland had said chased its way around his head. Did he believe him? He didn’t know. He certainly didn’t trust him. And he certainly didn’t like the way the bastard spoke about his brother. One thing was for sure: there was no way Sam was going to take Gabriel Bland’s word for anything.
There were unanswered questions, too. Things that just didn’t stack up. As he drove home, he kept reliving those moments in the woods outside the training camp: Craven catching one; the silent corpse of the Spetsnaz soldier. Were they Spetsnaz? Whoever they were, it seemed to Sam that they had been expecting the Regiment. Waiting for them. But how was that possible? The operation was top secret, a quick in-and-out job. The only way anyone would have known about the unit’s arrival was if they had been told. And if they had been told, that could mean only one thing. A leak. A mole.
What if I were to tell you, Sam, that the red-light runners were being trained not by MI5, but by a foreign intelligence agency? Bland’s words popped into Sam’s head. If Spetsnaz were being tipped off, everything pointed to the Russians, but that made no difference to Sam. He was being played by the Firm either way. He remembered Porteus, handcuffed and humiliated. He was being punished for tipping Sam off, that much was clear. But why then had Bland let Sam himself go so easily? He was up to something. Manoeuvring. He didn’t trust Sam any more than Sam trusted him.
He parked outside the flat. It always felt weird, coming home after an op. Like he was coming back from the office. Today it felt weirder than most other times. He took his rucksack from the back seat. It wasn’t regulation to take his gear home with him, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t like he was going to leave the contents of his bag at RAF Credenhill.
Sam locked himself into the flat and closed the curtains of the front room. Only then did he pull out the laptop computer.
He hadn’t had a chance to examine it, so he did so now. It was unremarkable. A little too unremarkable, perhaps: it bore no logo, no brand name. Its metal casing was scuffed and worn: the machine looked like it had received some pretty heavy use. Sam opened it up. Nothing unusual, just a bit of Kazakhstani grit that tumbled from the hinge and fell on to Sam’s lap. Some of the keys were worn away so that you could no longer see which letter they displayed; the delete key had come away completely, displaying its plastic skeleton underneath.
Sam found himself breathing heavily. He knew he should switch it on, but for some reason he felt reluctant. Perhaps, he told himself, he didn’t want to find out what this machine contained.
He scowled and pressed the power button.
For a second there was nothing. Then a whirr, and an electronic chord pinged around the room. The screen flickered and lit up. It was blue. A blank box in the middle, with a flickering cursor. Next to it: PASSWORD.
Sam blinked. He had no idea what to type. He should have expected this, but he hadn’t. Cursing under his breath, he closed the machine down. How was he going to break into it? How the hell was he going to break into it? Take it to a shop? No. He couldn’t just walk in somewhere and demand that someone he didn’t know hack into a computer; especially when he didn’t know what the computer contained. And when he went through his list of friends and acquaintances, people who might know someone who knew someone – well, they were all Regiment. Hereford was a closed shop. Word got around. No doubt tongues would already be wagging about his interview without coffee with the Firm in the Kremlin meeting room. He didn’t want to add fuel to the fire.
He sat in silence. Jesus, he stank worse than a hooker on the blob. He needed to shower. Picking up the laptop, he walked into the bedroom to strip. When he went into the bathroom, he carried the computer with him too. He wasn’t going to let it out of his sight. No way.
Half an hour later he was clean and freshly clothed: jeans, a hooded top and his trademark leather jacket replacing the stinking camouflage gear that sat in a heap on the floor. With the laptop under his arm, he left the flat. He realised as he walked outside that he was on tenterhooks, his eyes darting around for anything unexpected. But there was nothing. Sam climbed into his car, put the laptop on the passenger seat and drove off. He didn’t know when he had made the decis
ion. He didn’t even know for sure that he had made it until he hit the motorway heading towards London. His eyes were fixed in the rear-view mirror as much as they were on the road ahead. Sam almost expected to be followed; the fact that he couldn’t pick up any trails did nothing to quell his paranoia.
By the time he was approaching Addington Gardens in Acton, evening was beginning to close in. It was with a sense of déjà vu that he parked up in the same road parallel to Clare Corbett’s street. Hiding the laptop under his jacket, he sauntered to the corner of the road. Sam didn’t feel inclined simply to walk up and knock on the door – that would be making life too easy for anyone performing surveillance on the flat, if indeed that was what they were doing. Instead he loitered on the corner. Clare couldn’t stay at home forever. All he had to do was wait.
He glanced at his watch. 18.00 hrs. Darkness fell. 19.00 hrs. Inhabitants of the street left and returned to their homes. Sam couldn’t see anyone in the road who looked as if they were keeping watch over Clare’s place, but he knew that didn’t mean anything. He knew that if he were snooping, he would probably take up position in an upstairs room of one of the houses opposite.
It was just gone seven-thirty when Clare’s door opened and she stepped outside. She walked briskly, her head down and her arms, clad in a heavy brown coat, wrapped around her body. She looked small. Sam pulled his hood up and started following from a distance. He only increased his pace once they had both turned on to the main road. Clare didn’t dawdle. She wove in and out of the other pedestrians in the half light; Sam had to concentrate so as not to lose her. She came to a halt at a bus stop where a small crowd had congregated. Sam loitered for a few metres behind, keeping well out of sight.
The bus arrived, a long one with a flexible midriff. It was almost full and the windows were steamed up. Sam joined the queue, a couple of places behind Clare; when the moment came to pay his fare he had to scrabble around in his pocket to find change for the impatient driver. By the time he had paid, Clare had taken a seat towards the back. There was a spare place next to it. He put his head down again and approached her.