‘Everything okay?’ Stratton asked, forcing a smile, doing a bit of inspecting himself. Gabriel was conservatively dressed in a wool jacket, striped shirt, plain tie, wool trousers with a razor crease and brown brogues. He looked like a schoolteacher. His build suggested he had been athletic in his younger days but not any more. Everything about him, the cut of his cloth, hair, fingernails and neatness of his belongings suggested he was meticulous. He looked tired though, his eyes red and sunken, the lids blinking lazily indicating a thirst for sleep, and they flickered in harmony with his gravel voice as if sensitive to the coarseness of it.
‘You’re British military intelligence?’ Gabriel said, more a statement of doubt than a question.
‘And you’re Gabriel,’ Stratton said, ignoring the attitude and putting it down to paranoia. ‘You settled in all right?’ Stratton asked, practising his polite tone. ‘How was your trip?’
‘Tiring. I don’t like travelling.’
‘London can be a zoo.’
‘I’ve been here before,’ Gabriel said. ‘I’m not much of a fan . . . Excuse me,’ he said, looking Stratton in the eye as he took a pace towards him. Stratton moved aside and Gabriel walked past and into the bathroom where he packed his toothbrush, toothpaste, soap and comb into his ablutions bag, and walked back into the bedroom to the window where he collected more of his personal effects and placed them into a small holdall.
‘I take it we’re going right away?’ Gabriel asked as he picked up a pair of slippers off the floor and put them carefully into the bag so that the soles were uppermost and not touching any clothing.
‘Going where?’ Stratton asked as he watched Gabriel pull a quilted jacket on having apparently decided they were indeed leaving.
‘They didn’t tell you?’
‘Tell me what?’
‘I told them this morning and nothing’s changed,’ Gabriel said sounding irritated.
Gabriel was obviously not the friendliest of people. Stratton wondered if this was his permanent mood or if a night’s sleep would reveal a more gracious side to him. As for the information Gabriel had given ‘them’, Stratton could only wonder what he meant.
‘Why don’t we sit down and talk for a moment,’ Stratton suggested. ‘Get to know each other a little. Whatever it is you told them you can tell me,’ he continued, waiting for Gabriel to sit on the side of the bed before he took the seat by the door.
Gabriel remained standing looking unsatisfied with Stratton’s suggestion, or perhaps it was the patronising tone in which he spoke to him. ‘I can’t work here,’ he said. ‘That’s why I don’t like being away.’
‘Away from where?’
‘Virginia. I work better there.’
‘You live in Virginia?’
Gabriel gave him a look as if Stratton should have known the answer. ‘You are from MI6, aren’t you?’ he asked in a superior tone difficult to hide because that is how he felt. This thug was not what he had been expecting. He had imagined a man in a suit for a start, or at least a jacket and tie, not in what looked like nylon trousers with zipper pockets on the sides, boots of some description and a leather jacket that appeared to have survived World War Two. Gabriel suddenly wondered if there might have been a misunderstanding and that this man was simply a driver or escort.
Stratton could sense Gabriel’s discomfort with him but he was no stranger to being underestimated because of his looks. ‘I was brought on to the job in a bit of a hurry,’ Stratton said. ‘They told me a little, but who better to tell me about the job than you?’ He now wished he did know more about Gabriel and thought it was unlike Sumners not to brief him thoroughly, but since he had not, there was probably a reason behind it. Still, it had made his introduction appear amateurish. ‘Why don’t we take a moment and you can tell me everything I need to know.’
Gabriel frowned, disappointed this man was to be his ‘assistant’, but he was used to disappointment in this business. His own intelligence agency did not impress him at the best of times, and although he had never worked with the British before he did not expect they were likely to do so either. If this character was anything to go by, the Brits looked like they would prove to be dismally worse. When he heard British intelligence was sending over one of their people to assist him, he assumed he would be like the type he had met in abundance at CIA HQ, Foggy Bottom,Virginia. Normally he had nothing to do with the ‘labourers’ as his department referred to the CIA’s regular field agents. They occasionally sat in on meetings, usually in the form of familiarity briefings at the wacky spooks or psychic department, part of the tour for new agents. They came in all shapes and sizes and nearly always smartly dressed, but Gabriel had never met one like this before. He was not what Gabriel would have described as a big man, by American standards, although he did have an aura of toughness about him. Add to that his battered leather coat, dishevelled hair and a day’s growth on his face, overall, his look was unkempt to say the least. There was something else about him though, something Gabriel had never been so keenly aware of in a person before, agent or otherwise, not at first glance. If he were pushed to describe it, he would have to say there was a darkness around the man that his forced smile could not disguise.
‘Why’d you come to England then?’ Stratton breezed on. ‘If you work better in Virginia, that is?’
‘Too much interference. I couldn’t see clearly. Distance shouldn’t make a difference, but location sometimes does . . . my location . . . Sometimes where you are, the atmosphere and surroundings, are not conducive . . . The danger is here, anyway. I know that. This is the best place to be.’
‘Danger?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘What danger?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I mean, is it—’
‘I don’t know,’ Gabriel said, cutting him off brusquely as he went back to packing his things. ‘As soon as I got into the taxi at the airport and headed into London, I saw the air base as clearly as if I was there myself.’
‘What air base?’
‘I told them all about the air base,’ Gabriel said, looking at Stratton with unguarded suspicion. ‘What do you know about me and what I do?’
‘Look . . . I just came in from the outside. There wasn’t time for a proper brief. Let’s just accept I know nothing about you, what you do, or what this is all about. In fact, I don’t really have much of a clue what my part is supposed to be in this operation.’ If that’s what it is, he thought to himself. ‘So can we just cool it a little and accept I know nothing?’ Stratton’s sullen, unmoving eyes remained fixed on Gabriel’s.
Gabriel could sense the Englishman was no pushover and decided he liked being here as little as Gabriel did. If the Brits worked anywhere near the same way as the agency, they were stuck with each other, for the time being at least, and so to that end Stratton had a point. Gabriel was aware he was acting irritable and short tempered but he was never very good at dealing with pressure even when he was aware of all the mitigating circumstances. He was not naturally an ill-tempered man and did not like feeling that way.
Gabriel took a breath and made an effort to bring himself down. ‘I saw an American air base,’ he said, somewhat slower and calmer than he had been speaking previously. ‘I’m certain of that. There was a large wood nearby, a forest I should say. Soldiers use it. There are open spaces in the woods and I could see soldiers with guns and in combat fatigues.’
Stratton suddenly felt awkward listening to Gabriel as if he was providing serious information. It was one thing to try and accept that there were people who could see things as if they were able to transport themselves to another place on the planet, but to actually have to communicate with one as if everything they said was a fact made Stratton feel self-conscious, as if he was having a conversation with a mad person just to humour them.
‘You’re saying this American air base is in England?’ Stratton asked, ignoring his discomfort and doing his best to take this seriously.
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean, why? Why they put it in England?’
Stratton added another mental note about Gabriel. He was literal. ‘No. Why do you think it is an American air base in England?’
‘I can’t see signposts. It doesn’t work like that. If you were to think of a place, anywhere in the world, that you have been to, or even just heard or read descriptions of, a beach, a mountain range, a living room, whatever the images you had in your head, that’s what I would see. I can’t hear voices or the words in a person’s head, just images and emotions. Do you understand?’ Gabriel was beginning to sound like a teacher talking to a young student.
Stratton did not, but at least Gabriel was talking. ‘You can read anyone’s mind then?’ he asked.
‘It’s not mind reading. I don’t know who I can access or why I can access them. In this case it seems to be connected with something very evil.’
Stratton didn’t know what to make of Gabriel. Clearly the man believed in himself, and obviously several people high up in British and American intelligence did too. That negated whatever Stratton thought of all this. All he could do was get on with his job, once he had identified what that was. ‘So why an American air base in the UK?’ he asked.
‘Because it was filled with American personnel, soldiers, airmen, US flags.’
‘But what puts it in England?’
Gabriel went back to his packing. ‘The vehicles, the trucks and the cars, were driving on the left side of the road,’ he said as he neatly folded a shirt before placing it into another compartment of his holdall.
‘Why not Japan?’
‘Red phone boxes,’ Gabriel said. ‘There are some things I am able to work out for myself,’ he sighed. ‘You ever decoded remote viewers before?’
‘No.’
Gabriel shook his head. This was becoming more amateurish by the second. ‘Decoding is everything. You’re here because of your local knowledge. Your job is to interpret what I see.’
‘And you don’t have any hint of what the danger is?’ he asked.
‘I said no.’
‘Then how do you know there’s danger?’
‘Because he does. He knows it’s dangerous. It’s the danger itself that I’ve tapped into, more than anything physical.That’s why it’s so strong. It’s the most dangerous thing he’s ever done in his life, and he’s done many dangerous things. I can feel it in him, burning like a furnace.’
‘He?’
‘I don’t know who he is either.’
Stratton guessed that might be his answer. ‘You know where this danger is?’ he asked, pressing on.
‘No. It’s not with him. He’s looking for it, or at least he was last time I viewed him. He believes he knows where it is and how to find it, and he is determined to succeed. All I can tell you about the danger is that he’s touched it before but never experienced it.’
‘Do you know anything about him at all?’ Stratton asked, starting to treat it as a game to keep his interest up.
‘He’s foreign. I’m certain of that. I can’t hear voices or discern languages, just the emotion. Emotion has no language barriers. Yes, some races are more emotional than others, but I’m looking at an individual. He’s introvert. Lonely I think. He’s interesting. And dark, of course. Very dark. Dark and deep as an abandoned mine. And dangerous. I could get lost looking inside his head . . . There’s a lot of fear there . . . anxiety. Sadness too, and anger. He’s tormented, that’s for sure.’
‘How do you know it’s a man?’
‘He has the desires of a man.They’re different than the desires a woman has for another woman. You understand that much at least.’
Arsehole, Stratton added to Gabriel’s mental notes. However, the man was genuinely afraid of something and fear alters a person. ‘What do you think he’s afraid of?’
‘That’s the part that’s most confusing. Some of the fear is mine. I’m having trouble controlling it. It’s getting in the way.’
‘Why are you afraid?’
‘I don’t know.’
Stratton looked away, doing his best not to appear unconvinced, but Gabriel was far too sensitive to scepticism to miss it.
Gabriel smirked, more at himself or the situation than at Stratton. ‘You think I’m full of it, don’t you?’
Under different circumstances, Stratton might not have denied it, but considering the powers that sent both of them here to work together it would have been inappropriate. ‘I was told there might be a connection with the supertanker.’
‘You don’t want to be here,’ Gabriel said, ignoring the question and feeling his temper rising again. ‘I can’t see the point in you getting involved if you don’t have any faith.’
‘Maybe someone more suited to this will take my place tomorrow, but right now you’ve got me.’ Stratton hoped that was true about being replaced, and decided he was going to insist on it at the first opportunity.There was nothing about this assignment that fitted his job description.
Gabriel sat down on the bed heavily, exhausted, and held his head in his hands. ‘I need to rest,’ he said, and then immediately appeared to wrestle with himself and got to his feet again. ‘No. We must go. We have to identify the location.’
Stratton studied Gabriel as he pondered the situation. On an immediate basis, getting out on the ground and doing something appealed to him. He did not like stagnancy and preferred being on the move. Also, on a professional level, there was nothing worse than wasting time when there was an opportunity to make ground, and since this was the start, as far as Stratton was concerned at least, moving anywhere was a step forward. Besides, he needed to break the ice with this man, and it did not look as if he was going to get far stuck in this hotel room.
Stratton took his mobile phone from a pocket, scrolled through the phone list and hit the send button. A moment later the call was answered. ‘Stratton here. Two five eight. I need a car, self drive . . . Stratton, two five eight,’ he said, repeating his Military Intelligence number, but the person on the other end could not find any record of him. As soon as an operative was assigned to an operation, every department in MI was supposed to receive a notification e-mail. Not all areas were open to his discretion, such as requesting a private jet, which depended on his priority rating. A car should have been well within his allowances but the procurement department could give him nothing if he was not on the assignment roster. No doubt he was tapping into the system before Sumners had gotten to a computer. Stratton could hear voices at the other end and a moment later the person dealing with him came back on the phone. Stratton was about to ask him to get in contact with Sumners when he was told the assignment roster had just that second been updated and his request was already being processed. Stratton’s faith in the system returned. ‘Thank you,’ he said and put the phone back in his pocket. He checked his watch.
‘A car’s on its way,’ he told Gabriel who nodded and picked up his bag. ‘It’ll take a few minutes.’
Gabriel looked around the room to check he had everything.
‘Do you normally have help decoding your viewings?’ Stratton asked.
‘A vast research department usually.’
‘Back in Virginia.’
‘And Stanford, the research institute.’
‘That’s a university.’
‘The first remote-viewing protocols were synthesised at the institute. The programme was partially funded by the agency who monitor the security issues. But, of course, it’s better to have local knowledge if you’re looking for places, which is why you’re here.’
‘I understand the part about the local knowledge,’ Stratton said.
Gabriel believed him although he remained doubtful the Englishman was any closer to taking it seriously.
They stood in silence for a moment. Stratton had to admit he was mildly fascinated with the concept of being able to ‘see’ other people’s thoughts and wanted to ask Gabriel how he did it,
but decided this was not a good time. ‘Let’s head down to the street,’ he said, opening the door.‘It shouldn’t be long.’
Gabriel walked out of the room and Stratton followed letting the door swing shut.
They went down the stairs to the lobby, out through the hotel entrance and on to the street, where they stood apart in silence. A few minutes later a dark blue four-door Rover turned the corner from Edgware Road, cruised along the street and pulled to a stop in front of them. A man climbed out of the driver’s side leaving the engine running, looked at Stratton and gave him a nod. Stratton walked around the car to the driver’s door.
‘This got comms?’ Stratton asked the driver.
‘Na. It’s clean.’
‘No support kit in the boot?’
‘Nuffin. I was told you needed a sterile car just for a run around.’
Stratton understood - they were in good old England on a safe op - but he always liked the support of comms, a medic pack and a weapon or two, out of habit if nothing else. Safe ops held bad memories for him. The last one he ran was in Paris and he had lost a US Navy Seal operative to the Real IRA. ‘Thanks,’ Stratton said to the man who nodded and walked away up the street.
‘This is our ride,’ Stratton said to Gabriel. Gabriel climbed into the back while Stratton got behind the wheel and shut his door. He turned to look at Gabriel pulling his bag beside him and resting his head on the back of the seat as if preparing to sleep.
‘Where’re we going?’ he asked as he turned back to familiarise himself with the instruments and check the fuel gauge.
‘That’s your job,’ Gabriel said tiredly.
Stratton suddenly felt like a chauffeur but held back any sarcastic comment, reminding himself this was a game and a temporary one at that. Gabriel had the clues and Stratton had to piece them together. It might even be fun. What else was going on?
The Hijack Page 13