He spun on his heel, and was staring up at a camera fixed to the top corner of a building when two squad cars pulled up and disgorged armed officers. They each immediately grabbed a likely looking witness and began to question them, isolating witnesses from new arrivals. Others began to seal off the area and direct traffic away.
Harry ignored them. Time was running out. If he and Rik got dragged inside the cordon, they would be caught up answering questions about why they were carrying weapons to go looking for Clare. If she got pulled in, she’d be exposed and vulnerable. They had to get her away from here.
But first they had to find her. There were alleyways and a few side entrances to the shops that she could have ducked into, but checking those out would take too long and be noticed. He studied the onlookers, most of them with their backs turned, staring at the action going on outside the Starbucks, and the people helping the wounded policeman. One of the two women outside the public convenience block had joined the crowd, but the other was still where Harry had first seen her, shifting from foot to foot.
The policeman. He’d been shot by one of the Russians. And where he had fallen was in direct line with where Harry and Rik were standing. And in line with the convenience block.
‘Come on.’ Harry walked across to the woman who was staring impatiently at the locked toilet door.
‘Problem?’ he queried.
The woman looked at him, suspecting a flanking move to get inside first. ‘She’s been in there ages,’ she muttered, nodding at the door. ‘She might be disabled and all that, but really . . . you know?’ She gave a toss of her head and tutted at woman’s inhumanity to woman.
‘Disabled?’
‘Yes. On a crutch. You know, those metal things. Not that she was moving slow. It was just after all that banging and shouting.’ She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, evidently unconcerned by the fact that a shooting had happened only yards away from where she was standing.
Harry said, ‘Excuse me – I think I know who she is.’ He turned so that he was shielding the door from the police across the road and put his head down. ‘Clare? It’s Harry. I got your message. We need to leave. Now.’
‘Hey – what are you doing?’ The woman tapped him on the shoulder. ‘What’s going on?’
‘We’re looking for a young woman who walked out of a secure unit,’ Rik told her. He tapped his head. ‘She’s . . . confused, you know?’ He waited until she nodded, then said, ‘We’re here to take her back, so she doesn’t come to any harm.’
Then the door clicked open and Clare Jardine stepped outside.
THIRTY-ONE
Harry and Rik virtually lifted Clare off her feet and steered her away from the police activity. Surprisingly, she didn’t put up any protest. In fact, both men kept looking at her; this was not the Clare Jardine they both knew. Gone was the spiky attitude, the energy and the ‘leave me alone or suffer the consequences’ aura she habitually wore around her like a force field. Instead she looked drained, her face greasy and pale and her shoulders slumped in a display of defeat.
Once they had a couple of street corners between them and the police, Harry slowed and gestured at a low stretch of wall outside an apartment block. Clare was breathing heavily and he was worried that she was going to collapse if they pushed her too far.
She slumped down on the wall and looked at both men. ‘Is this where I say thank you, you big brave boys, and go all gushy and grateful?’
‘Christ, that’s more like it,’ Rik muttered. ‘I thought they’d overdone the meds and made you into a human being.’
‘Spin on it, Ferris,’ she murmured, but there was a glint of something resembling humour in her eye. Then she added, ‘OK, thanks.’
Harry sat beside her. ‘Who were the shooters and what did they want?’
‘Russians. One of their direct actions units, probably. They were the same two who came to the hospital and killed Tobinskiy. I suppose he was killed? I haven’t heard any news.’
‘Choked on his own vomit. That’s the official line, anyway. But there are signs he was smothered. It won’t be made public until they get full autopsy results and make up their minds how to play it. How do you know they were the same men?’
‘One of them likes peppermints. They also threatened to shoot everyone in the café if I didn’t behave. Like it was an everyday thing. And they weren’t joking. Is that good enough for you?’
‘How did they find you?’
‘I don’t know. I think they had spotters out looking for me. There was this young guy on the phone near the Starbucks. He pretended not to see me, but he wasn’t a pro. He disappeared and minutes later, those two arrived and started with the threats.’
‘What did they say?’
‘They wanted me to go with them. They didn’t explain why, but I think if I’d put up a fight, they’d have slotted me on the spot. Then a cop car stopped outside because their car was blocking a reserved space for builders. That’s when I decided to leg it.’ She took a deep breath and shivered. ‘That’s when the shooting started. Was anyone hurt?’
‘A cop,’ said Rik. ‘But he looked OK. The Russians got away.’
Clare nodded and looked at Harry. ‘Have you still got friends in dark places?’
‘You mean Six? Yes, why?’
‘I got their registration.’ She recited the number and make of car. ‘It’s probably been dumped already but someone might see who left it.’
Harry texted Ballatyne with the details. He didn’t hold out much hope of it carrying a trace, but it was worth a try this early on in the day.
Ballatyne called him five minutes later. ‘You’ve got Jardine there with you?’ He sounded surprised. ‘I suppose it would be asking too much for her to pop in for a chat.’
‘Why don’t you ask her.’
Harry passed the phone to Clare, who listened for a second, then said, ‘Dream on, Ballatyne. I’ll deal with Tate and Ferris, but that’s it.’ She passed the phone back and pulled her jacket around her.
‘She’s a little charmer, isn’t she?’ Ballatyne commented. ‘Still, can’t blame her, I suppose. Leave this with me and I’ll put out a city-wide search.’
‘You do that.’ Harry thought about the street camera and its scope of coverage. ‘You might have someone check out a camera across the junction from the café, above a kitchen shop. If it’s working, it should give you a clear shot of everyone arriving and leaving the Starbucks where Clare was approached. They were the same two from the hospital.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Ballatyne clearly meant with Clare.
‘For the moment, keep our heads down.’
‘Where?’
‘You don’t need to know.’
‘That sounds ominous.’
‘Don’t blame me. You’re the ones with the leaky windows.’
Ballatyne gave a grudging murmur. ‘Fair comment.’ He paused, then said, ‘I want you to come in for a meeting. We need to get some action decided and I need your input.’
Harry thought about arguing against it; he hadn’t been near Vauxhall Cross or Thames House since leaving the Security Service, and didn’t want to do so now. But it might give him some advantage if he knew what the official security agencies’ line was. Sitting in on a meeting wouldn’t be so bad.
But Ballatyne took his silence for assent and pre-empted him. ‘There’s a security office door opening onto Great Scotland Yard, next to the Civil Service Club. Ask the guard inside to direct you to room 101.’
Harry nearly laughed. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘I wish I were. Life imitating art, I’m afraid. It’s a genuine meeting room where embarrassing or annoying issues get shelved for good. You should feel quite at home there. One hour. Please don’t be late.’
He hung up without saying goodbye.
‘Where are you taking me?’
They were in Harry’s car heading north. Clare was bundled in the back seat, hunched over and clutching her stomach. She looked deathly
pale and Rik was keeping an eye on her from the front passenger seat. They had hit the area around Sloane Square barely five minutes from the scene of the shooting, leaving behind a growing atmosphere of activity and blue lights, with a police helicopter already coming in over the rooftops and hovering overhead.
‘Hospital would be a good place to start,’ said Harry, steering them up towards Knightsbridge. ‘You need checking over.’
‘Forget it. I’ve had enough of hospitals. Give me some painkillers and I’ll be fine.’
‘Your call.’ Harry knew enough not to waste time arguing. ‘We’ll go to Rik’s place. It’s not far and you can rest up there until we decide what to do.’
‘Why bother? Let me out anywhere – I told you, I’ll be fine.’ She sat up and peered through the window to get her bearings, eyeing the up-market stores and the expensive cars jostling for space at the kerb. ‘Jesus, not here, though. Too many cops and security guards.’
‘Too many cameras, too,’ said Harry. ‘It’s how they got onto you in the first place.’
She scowled and leaned forward between the seats, working on the implications of that. ‘I was wondering how it happened. I must be getting slow. But how could they do it without help?’
‘That’s what we’d like to know,’ said Rik. ‘They moved bloody quick, considering. Maybe they’ve been here before and know the ground.’
‘They haven’t.’ She winced and grabbed for the seat as they squeezed through the lights and headed towards Hyde Park Corner. ‘The tall one, the one in charge, he said they were new here and they’d never be back. He meant he could shoot me and walk away. It’s how their direct action teams work; in and out and move on. God knows, they’ve got enough personnel to rotate them a hundred times over if they need to.’
‘You seem to know a lot about them,’ Rik commented.
‘I had to, once; it was part of the job. The FSB were the enemy. Still are.’
Harry said, ‘Did they give any clues about why they’re here or who they report to?’
She shook her head. ‘No. They were in the hospital to deal with Tobinskiy, then came after me. They must have realised I’d bugged out of King’s because I’d heard too much. If I could speak Russian, I was a threat. So I had to be eliminated.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘They don’t change, do they? They have a problem, they take it out.’ She spoke matter-of-factly, as if discussing the disposal of trash.
‘So why didn’t they just shoot you inside? Better still, wait for you on the street and deal with you there?’
‘Beats me. I think they were having fun, showing how clever they were.’ She paused. ‘The tall one said I’d embarrassed them and led them a dance. I don’t know what he meant by it, but I can guess.’
Harry didn’t say anything for a few moments, focussing on the traffic. Then he said, ‘So can I. Getting away from the hospital the way you did put them on the spot. They weren’t supposed to leave any witnesses. They might have wanted to take you back alive to regain the lost ground with whoever’s controlling them.’
‘That makes me sound like a bloody trophy,’ Clare muttered. But she didn’t argue the point and lay down with a soft groan, her head on the seat.
‘One thing’s for sure,’ said Rik bluntly. ‘They weren’t going to hang on to you for long.’ There was no answer and he glanced at Harry. ‘What are you going to be doing?’ he asked softly.
‘I’ve got a meeting to go to.’ Harry didn’t enlarge on it. It was better not to give Clare another reason to cut and run. In her condition she wouldn’t last five minutes out there. ‘Can you watch her? Don’t let her go out.’
Rik nodded with a wry smile. ‘Will do. She’s still a grumpy cow, but I owe her that.’
THIRTY-TWO
While Harry drove them north towards Paddington, the two FSB men were on a similar course, but further east, eager to get clear of the inevitable police cordon being thrown up around Pimlico.
‘Who is that bloody woman?’ Votrukhin was finding it hard to contain his anger at losing Jardine so easily, and slammed a fist against the passenger door panel. The same questions he’d asked Jardine had been going through his mind in an endless rote, demanding answers. ‘How the hell does she know about Troparevskiy?’
‘The Internet,’ Serkhov ventured. ‘Every school kid with a PC can find out where we are these days. When we get back we should get the Sixth-Oh-Sixth Rocket Regiment to use some of their specials to shoot down the Google Earth satellites. They’re nothing but trouble.’
Votrukhin ignored him. He was too busy trying not to think about their next meeting with Gorelkin. The colonel would be uncontrollable at this second failure, and would probably have them on the next plane back to Moscow in disgrace. The likelihood of them surviving as members of the Special Purpose Centre were about as high as an armed Chechen terrorist in the middle of Red Square with a smoking bomb in his hand being invited in for vodka and zakuski.
Serkhov said nothing. It had been he who had opened fire, shooting the cop who had leapt out of his car to stop them, in spite of Votrukhin’s orders. He focussed instead on driving and keeping his eyes open for police cars or road blocks. Neither of them was sure how the British authorities might react to the shooting, but it was likely to involve a concerted raid on cameras on the ground and in the air. They had already seen how easy it was to track an individual on foot across the city; following a car, even among a flow of similar vehicles, would not be a problem. The added advantage of number recognition programmes would pin them down very quickly.
‘We have to get rid of this car,’ Votrukhin said, regaining his calm. It would not help their case, losing it, but cars were disposable assets and this one, like others they could use, was untraceable. ‘Did you check any places we can use?’
Serkhov nodded. As the driver, it was his responsibility to find a way of disposing of the car should they run into trouble, like now. ‘There’s a place near Shepherd’s Bush. They can make a car disappear in an hour.’ He made a chopping motion with his hand. ‘Tiny pieces, then melted down. No traces, no fingerprints, nothing.’
‘Good. Go there now.’
Ten minutes later they were cruising along Park Lane when Serkhov swore. Two police cars had appeared in the distance behind them, lights flashing to help them carve through the traffic. More blue lights were flashing up ahead and there was already a build-up of cars and buses blocking the road around Marble Arch.
‘What the hell?’ Votrukhin twisted in his seat to watch the two following cars with a feeling of alarm. ‘They can’t have traced us yet. It’s impossible.’
‘So why are they sitting on our tails then, and blocking the road ahead? They must have the description of this car.’
Votrukhin thought about it for a couple of seconds before logic took over. He sat back and faced the front. ‘Yes. But they’re throwing up an outer cordon, that’s all. They can’t yet know who we are or where we are for sure. But if we get caught inside it, we’re stuck.’
‘What do we do? We can’t dump this right here – they’d see us.’
‘I know.’ Votrukhin glanced quickly around, feeling a lot less calm than he sounded. They were just coming up level with the Grosvenor House building, where they had had their meeting with Gorelkin and the English traitor, Paulton. There were streets on that side, where they could lose themselves long enough to dispose of the car and walk away. But that was on the other side of Park Lane, with an expanse of grass, flowerbeds and trees in the central reservation behind a V-shaped metal barrier that looked too strong to burst through. On this side there were no streets, just the railed-off expanse of Hyde Park, which offered no escape whatsoever.
‘There!’ He pointed ahead to a ramp going into an underground car park. Any CCTV system would have the car instantly, but by the time the authorities got round to studying it, he and Serkhov would be long gone. They wouldn’t dare risk coming back to the car, but that was too bad.
Serkhov responded calmly, signallin
g and cutting neatly into the inside lane. They were already dropping out of sight as the two police cars swished by.
‘Keep your face averted from the cameras,’ Votrukhin warned Serkhov. ‘This isn’t over yet.’ He pointed at a corner space, jammed between a Jaguar and a 7-Series BMW. ‘In here. Leave the keys in the ignition. With luck it will be gone within the hour.’
‘What about Gorelkin? He’ll go nuts if we dump it.’
‘Gorelkin can go screw himself. We’re the ones in danger here, not him. Now do it.’
Serkhov did as he was ordered and parked the car. Moments later they were walking away from the car, heads down and with their faces partially covered by their mobiles, two businessmen hurrying to a meeting.
But their departure wasn’t entirely unseen. In the shadows, behind a primped-up van with fat tyres and tinted windows, two men stopped trying to open the doors and watched them go, drawn to the interior light of the BMW and the partially open passenger door.
THIRTY-THREE
Richard Ballatyne was waiting to greet Harry on the second floor landing of a building in Great Scotland Yard. The security guard nodded and left them to it, and Ballatyne walked away trailing a crooked finger.
‘Sorry about the rush,’ he said quietly. ‘But this was an opportunity to get several important heads together on record without going through a full-blown meeting with everyone and their brother from the Sec of State down. We’ve got two gofers on a watching brief from the wider cabinet office and one from COBRA; a sit-in for the Joint Intelligence Committee; Commander John Crampton from CO19 . . . and Candida Deane of the Russian Desk.’ The pause there was, Harry sensed, deliberate. A warning.
‘Nobody from Five?’ His old employers. He was surprised. Anything involving the activities of foreign agents in the country should have had MI5 representatives here in droves, jostling for the prize.
Execution (A Harry Tate Thriller) Page 15