Execution (A Harry Tate Thriller)

by Adrian Magson

  She ignored them, aware that she was attracting attention but unable to avoid it.

  We can help you. Ring me. Pink Compact. So not your colour.

  Harry Tate. It had to be. Or Rik bloody Ferris. The reference to the compact was the decider; the identifier to stop her running for the hills. Clever.

  She switched the phone off and stuffed it back in her pocket. She needed time to think. To get her mind in order. Peace and quiet hadn’t helped her, in that basement, so maybe this noisy environment, with the threat of discovery not far away, would work instead, getting her brain cells firing on all cylinders.

  She took out the pink compact and turned it over, the plastic smooth and comfortable to hold. Amid all the craziness that had happened recently, this was the one normal thing she had in her possession. She stood up and went to the washroom, leaving the crutch against the chair. She was shaking with nerves, and her stomach was sending shivers through her whole body. She’s pushed herself too hard and was now paying the consequences. She washed her face and rinsed her mouth with water, then washed her hands. She needed a shower or a bath; she felt gritty and sweaty, and her clothes were beginning to smell. She’d managed to rinse her underclothes, but that was all. She dabbed on some of the powder from the compact, but gave up when it stuck to the moisture in her skin.

  She returned to her table. The women and children were gathering themselves together, like a small tribe moving on to pastures new, scooping up their clutter. She sat and watched them leave by stages, edging towards the door, and sipped her coffee, going over her options.

  She ran her fingers across the mobile in her pocket. She’d almost had the number for Alice earlier. It had hung there, taunting her, the digits swimming around like fish in a tank, one second in place, the next confused. Then gone.

  The same had happened with another number. But that one was a definite no-no. She had ignored it, knowing it would come to nothing. But then the numbers had come back clearly, and one by one, fallen into line like balls in the National Lottery. And perversely, when what she really wanted was Alice’s number, there they had stayed, tight and ordered in her mind’s eye, waiting to be dialled.

  Why couldn’t the number she wanted do that, instead of this . . . forbidden one? It had been so tempting to try the keys. Katya Balenkova. The familiar image of the slim face and short blonde hair hovered before her, causing an ache she thought she had long suppressed.

  An echo of the ache that had led to her downfall.

  But calling Katya would trigger alarm bells in more than one place, of the kind that would end in disaster for both of them. After she had been pulled off the assignment by her controller at Vauxhall Cross, she’d had no news of the FSO officer’s fate and had heard nothing since. For all she knew, Katya might be dead.

  She leaned forward to check the street, her view now clearer with the mothers and children gone. The young man had disappeared. She’d been lucky; just a few seconds more out in the open and he would have seen her.

  She sat back with a sigh and watched in a detached way as a blue BMW drew up at the kerb and two men got out. They ignored the reserved parking sign for deliveries, and a workman in a yellow tabard and hard hat protesting about needing the space.

  The men crossed the pavement and stepped inside. The first was tall and dark, military in bearing. A leader. The second was stockier, heavy across the shoulders. A follower. She labelled them instinctively, businessman and driver. She felt tiredness wash over her. This was taking more out of her than she’d thought possible. She needed to get back to the empty flat; to get her head down and sleep.

  The two men ignored her and went to the counter, ordering tea and coffee.

  She must have dozed off momentarily, because suddenly they were sitting down, the tall one by her side, the other across from her.

  Blocking her in.

  The taller man shifted in his seat, bringing him slightly closer.

  With him came the familiar smell of peppermint, giving her a jolt of recognition more acute and identifying than a face.

  ‘Miss Jardine,’ he said softly, looking into his mug of tea with distaste. He placed it to one side and added, ‘You’ve embarrassed us, my colleague and me. Led us quite a dance. Is that how the saying goes?’

  Her instinct was to ask him who he was, what the hell he was talking about, to dissemble and act the outraged lone woman accosted by two predatory men. But she knew that wouldn’t work.

  He was speaking Russian.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Clare stared at him. The shock of hearing him use her name lasted a brief moment before she managed to clamp down on any reaction. Of course he’d know it; he’d have got it from the hospital. The moment they’d found her gone, after dealing with Tobinskiy, they’d have gone into overdrive, deciding what, if any, were the implications of her disappearance, and what to do about it. How they had found out she spoke and understood Russian was incidental. They’d probably drawn that conclusion from her sudden departure. It would have been enough to have had them calling in expertise, checking records, chasing down CCTV records and trawling the streets.

  Now they’d found her.

  If she hadn’t been so stunned, she’d have been impressed.

  ‘What do you want?’ She remained calm, studying both men, analysing what kind of opposition they presented. She wasn’t going to outrun them or fight them off, not in her condition; they looked too fit, too determined. Professionals. FSB or their contractors at the very least, to have been sent here after Tobinskiy. That meant they wouldn’t be easily stopped. But she had to find a way out somehow without involving anyone else.

  She felt the mobile in her pocket. Eased it out to lie by her leg, where they couldn’t see it. Pressed the re-dial key.

  ‘We would like you to come with us,’ the tall one answered. ‘No fuss, no trouble.’ He flicked a finger sideways to indicate the other customers. ‘We don’t want to . . . alarm these good people, do we?’

  For alarm, read hurt, she thought. They were actually going to take her out of here.

  She didn’t need to look around to know exactly who was in the café. Her training had kicked in and she already knew. There were two baristas behind the counter, with five customers in the place; two at the counter, three at tables. All women. All innocents. If these were the same two men from the hospital, they were unlikely to be here on legal papers and would not react well to confrontation, or to her refusal to go quietly.

  It would be a bloodbath.

  She could hear the phone ringing out. Just a tiny sound. Or it might have been her imagination. Surely they would hear it, too? They couldn’t be that deaf.

  Come on, Tate. For Christ’s sake pick up!

  But they appeared to be unaware. Or maybe they didn’t care.

  The ringing stopped. She couldn’t hear a voice responding, but she imagined it. A beat or two, the cadence of an incoming call with no voice, followed by another query: Hello?

  ‘What are you going to do, shoot them?’ she said. She held her chin down, trying to project her voice down at the phone without the nearest customers hearing her. The last thing she needed was panic.

  ‘If we have to, we can do that,’ the shorter one replied. He leaned forward over the table, unwittingly putting his face nearer to the phone. ‘We could shoot them all, before you could make a sound.’ He grinned coldly, enjoying the moment.

  She swallowed at his nearness. All he had to do was look down and he’d see the phone by her leg, the screen clearly lit up.

  ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘Of course we would.’ He picked up the powder compact where she’d placed it on the table and studied it, turning it over as if studying a particularly interesting relic. ‘Perhaps I will take this as a souvenir of our visit. I have a girlfriend who likes this trash. What do you say?’

  Clare tried to snatch it back, but he was too quick. He sat back and continued toying with the compact, then put it in his pocket, a sly smil
e on his face.

  The tall one said, ‘I hope you realise that it would be quite simple for us to just shoot you here and walk out. Do you really want us to harm them – just because of you? We are new here, the authorities don’t have our faces on their databases and we will never come back. So who cares? Simple.’

  ‘How did you find me?’ In spite of the threats, Clare was puzzled by the speed with which they had tracked her down. From a standing start, they had moved with amazing speed, in a city where finding a single person should have many taken days.

  In response, he dropped a couple of photos on the table. One was obviously a still from the hospital CCTV; she recognised the bland NHS décor even with the grainy finish. The other looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t think why. It had a string of numbers printed across the bottom and could have come from anywhere. It had been taken face-on, a bland head and shoulders shot like a passport, only bigger. She tried desperately to recall where it could have been taken, but her mind was a blank.

  She swallowed the rise of fear and despair that rose in her throat. Something about this photo meant something; but she couldn’t think why. And that helplessness made her more frightened than anything else. All she knew was, they had found her so quickly, that all her efforts had been laughable. But there was a core deep inside her that refused to give in. She breathed deeply, watching the tall Russian’s face. He seemed unaware of how much the photo had affected her. Or maybe he assumed she was just acknowledging that she was caught.

  ‘Where did these come from?’ she asked.

  ‘We have our sources.’

  ‘Sources?’ It was a vain hope that he might tell her something, but she had to try.

  ‘You think we’re amateurs, Miss Jardine? You think I’m going to tell you who got them for us?’ He shook his head slowly, but looked very pleased with himself. ‘Dream on, I think the saying goes in English.’

  Clare hoped Harry Tate was listening and scrabbled for a way of conveying to him where they were. It might take too long to respond, but she couldn’t think of another way of doing it.

  ‘This is Starbucks in Pimlico Road, London,’ she muttered, changing tack and putting on a tone of outrage, ‘not Grozny. You do know the Iranians have a consulate building just along the street, don’t you?’ It was a lie, but she was counting on these two not knowing that. Active units like this would be focussed on finding their target, staying below the local radar, completing their assignment – and getting out fast. What they would know, however, was that Iran was nobody’s friend at the moment and the likelihood was that its buildings would have watchers in place and armed police in close proximity, in case of protests and trouble.

  Their eyes didn’t waver a jot. They were too good for that. But she sensed something passing between them, like an electrical signal.

  ‘You’re lying.’ The short one spoke. But he didn’t sound certain.

  ‘Please yourself. Why don’t you try something, see how far you get before there are more cops with guns here than you can count? Try explaining that to your bosses in Troparevskiy Park.’

  The tall one didn’t even blink. But his colleague’s mouth dropped open just a fraction. It was enough to tell her she’d made a mistake, and she cursed herself. Fuck. That had slipped out unbidden. What she had said told them that she was no ordinary person who’d just happened to be in a hospital ward next to one of their own dissident countryman; ordinary people don’t know about the Troparevskiy site, the very secret training base south of Moscow for the FSB’s Special Purpose Centre.

  The tall man was studying her like a sample on a lab tray. He asked softly, ‘Who are you, Miss Jardine? Or maybe I should ask, what are you? You speak almost fluent Russian and you know things most Russians don’t know.’ He seemed to notice her crutch for the first time, and leaned over and picked it up. He weighed it in his hand and gave a dismissive shrug, then took off the rubber ferule and studied the flattened end. And smiled.

  ‘Nobody. I’m nobody.’ But she knew it was a futile argument. She’d as good as told them in a few careless words.

  Just then a blur of colour moved into view out in the street, catching her eye. The workman in the yellow tabard had stopped a police car and was pointing at the Russians’ car. Behind it, a skip lorry was waiting to move into the kerb.

  Sensing this was her only chance, Clare reached across and flipped over the tall man’s tea, spilling it across the table at his colleague.

  ‘Suka!’ the shorter man yelled, and jumped up as the hot liquid poured into his lap.

  It was enough of a gap. Clare stood up and forced her way past him, gritting her teeth against the pain, aware of the tall man reaching out for her, but missing.

  THIRTY

  Harry heard the words coming out of the phone and stared at Rik, who stopped pacing up and down at the sound of the familiar voice. He’d automatically switched it to loudspeaker mode the moment he’d answered. They could hardly believe what they’d heard.

  ‘This is Starbucks in Pimlico Road, London, not Grozny . . .’

  ‘She’s in trouble,’ said Harry. ‘Where the hell is—?’

  ‘It’s right here!’ Rik pointed at the street sign above their heads on the restaurant’s wall. ‘We’re in Pimlico Road right now.’ He spun on his heel and looked along the street, then grabbed a waiter coming out of The Grove. ‘Where’s the Starbucks?’

  ‘Pardon?’ The man looked affronted.

  ‘The Starbucks in Pimlico Road. How far down?’

  The man shrugged off Rik’s hand. ‘I don’t know – maybe two hundred yards down that way.’ He gestured with his chin. ‘On the left, with all the scaffolding.’

  But he’d already lost his audience as Harry and Rik took off along the street.

  Harry saw the police car in the road while they were still a hundred yards away, and heard the sharp crack of gunshots. Two men appeared from inside a doorway, and raced across the pavement towards a car at the kerb. Men in workmen’s tabards and hard hats stood around in shock, and a figure in uniform lay crumpled in the road alongside the police patrol car.

  There was no sign of Clare.

  Rik raced ahead, hauling out his gun and shouting at the workmen to get out of the way. They did so, diving back into the shelter of the buildings, a discarded hard hat bouncing and rolling into the gutter behind them. Someone screamed and a car horn sounded as the car the men had jumped into screeched away from the kerb, clipping another vehicle on the way and scattering broken yellow glass as it went.

  Rik ran out into the centre of the street and stopped, bringing his gun to bear on the departing car. He aimed, then stopped. It was already eighty yards away and accelerating. Too far for accuracy and a scattering of innocent pedestrians had already formed a random and unwitting human shield around it. One stray shot and he’d have a disaster on his conscience.

  Harry slowed to a jog and scanned the people in the area. If Clare was around, she’d either been shot and was still here or she’d already disappeared.

  Sirens sounded in the distance and people gathered around the fallen policeman, who was struggling to sit up. A woman in a Starbucks T-shirt stood on the pavement, her face drained of colour and her mouth open in shock.

  Harry looked inside the café. It was empty, one of the small tables and a couple of chairs up-ended, mugs and plates lying broken on the floor.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked the employee. He had to repeat the question before she answered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she mumbled hurriedly, her accent Spanish or Italian. ‘Is crazy. One second, two men are sitting with a woman. Next she is rushing out and one of the men is shouting.’ She gestured at her front. ‘His clothes is wet and he is shouting but I don’t know his words. Foreign, I think, not English. Then the men walk outside after her and paff, paff – they start shooting and a policeman he is falling and . . .’ She rubbed at her face as tears poured down her cheeks. ‘Why would they do this?’

  ‘Where di
d the woman go?’ Harry asked. The sirens were now very close and he guessed he had only seconds before armed response units arrived and the area was cordoned off.

  She looked puzzled. ‘What?’

  ‘The woman – the one with the men. Where did she go?’

  ‘I . . . I didn’t see.’

  ‘Did she leave the building? Did they take her with them?’

  ‘Yes. I . . . I don’t know – maybe. No, wait. She walk out first and disappear. The men are chasing her but she is already gone, I not see where.’

  Harry whistled to catch Rik’s attention, and thrust his hand in his jacket as a signal to put his gun away. If the first responders were armed, they would come out of their car zeroing in on anyone with a gun.

  ‘She can’t have gone far,’ he said, when Rik joined him. ‘But we can’t get caught up in this. Let’s go.’ He walked away across the street. The area here opened out into a small paved triangle with trees and flowerbeds where three streets intersected, and he was heading for the widest area, the most difficult to close off. It was also where he figured Clare would have made for, planning on putting as much distance and confusing scenery between her and the men as she could. Staying on the same street and in direct line of sight of a man with a gun would have been a death sentence.

  They crossed the paved area, past a line of bikes chained to a rack; a squat public convenience block with two women frozen to the spot outside the door; then more bikes and some seats. Everything was neat and ordered, tidy and upscale; a bit like a model toy-town, Harry thought. Take out the gunfire and it would have been ideal.

  They stopped on the far side, checking the two other streets. Gawpers were converging in numbers to see what all the fuss was about, but nobody was walking away. No woman with a crutch.

  ‘She can’t have moved that quick,’ said Rik. ‘Not in her condition.’

  Harry agreed. She must have gone under cover somewhere. It’s what she would have been trained to do, to get off the radar and keep her head down until it was safe to move on. Having two gunmen on her tail would have been encouragement enough to make it quick.