Fear.
Was this where they’d brought Willard for his final few hours? Probably not, Harvey thought, given the man’s final resting place.
‘Name,’ Scarface said, sounding bored. He sliced a piece of cured sausage and popped it into his mouth.
‘Andrew Harvey.’ There was nothing to lose giving them that information, but he knew the questions would soon get tougher.
‘Who you work for, Andrew Harvey?’
‘No-one.’
‘Then what you do at factory?’
‘I was going to rob the place,’ Harvey said.
‘Rob?’
‘Break in. Steal things.’
Scarface looked at one of his men and nodded. A fist came from nowhere and caught Harvey high on the right cheekbone. His head snapped sideways, and he let it stay there for a moment before gingerly shaking it to check for damage. He’d never been hit so hard in his life, and he was surprised that nothing felt broken.
‘With these?’ Scarface said, holding up the night-vision glasses and government-issue communication unit. ‘Try again.’
Harvey eyed the man to his right, who was cracking almonds with a pair of pliers. A grin appeared on the man’s face as he tossed a nut into his mouth, and he held up the tool so that Harvey could get a good look at it.
The message was loud and clear, a taste of what he could look forward to in the coming hours, perhaps even days. The interrogation training he’d been through many years ago had been rudimentary at best, and hadn’t prepared him in any way for what he was facing. The idea had been to hold out, as long as possible until help came. But despite having a high pain threshold, he knew that he wouldn’t last long.
The anticipation of the torture is usually worse than the actual pain, his instructor had said. Judging by the stern looks on the faces of his captors, Harvey seriously doubted that.
The way he saw it, he had two options. The first was to tell them which organisation he worked for. If he could convince them that their journey had been tracked all the way, they might decide to move on, and the longer he could keep them on the road the greater the chance of his colleagues locating him through the country’s mass surveillance network.
The downside was that he had no idea what information they wanted from him. If he revealed the nature of his job, they might decide to kill him immediately, or torture him until they knew everything MI5 did about their mission.
Option two was to tell them nothing in the hope that Ellis had actually managed to follow the trail. The question was, how long could he hold out for? Minutes? Hours? Days?
They would eventually get the information out of him, but would the delay in talking give Ellis enough time to follow the trail?
He doubted it. If she hadn’t managed to find him leaving the business park on CCTV by now, she never would.
‘I work for the government,’ he said at last.
The decision to talk was ultimately an easy one. It wasn’t as if he was protecting anyone. No-one would die if he gave them what they wanted, and a swift end was far preferable to endless hours of agony. Ellis would assign others to the case, and Bessonov would be stopped before he could carry out his plan. Telling them what he knew might even make them reconsider and cancel their operation. A win-win for everyone.
Apart from himself.
Scarface sliced another chunk off the sausage and stabbed it with his knife. ‘What government? MI5? MI6?’
‘Five,’ Harvey said, ‘and we know exactly what you’re up to. We know you plan to kill Viktor Milenko during his visit. My boss needed proof, and when you killed my friend and kidnapped me, you gave it to her. Security will be screwed down so tight, you won’t be able to get within a mile of him.’
Scarface grinned, genuine amusement in his eyes. ‘Vasily, show him your new toy.’
One of the men went into another room and returned with a black leather case. He opened it and within seconds had assembled the component parts into an impressive-looking weapon.
‘Accuracy International AS50,’ Scarface said. ‘Designed and built for US Special Operations Command. In two seconds it fires five .50-calibre rounds at a range of two thousand yards. Already this month we have had your prime minister in the sights twice. We could have killed him any time we like.’
The revelation confirmed Harvey’s fear that he wouldn’t be walking away from this situation with his life intact. Not only had they revealed their faces but they’d also shown him their weapon of choice.
‘My people will come looking for me,’ he said. ‘They’ll find me eventually.’
‘Da, in small pieces!’ Scarface laughed, and a couple of the others joined in.
Vasily spoke in Russian, and Scarface translated.
‘He says your head would make a good target to check his weapon . . . How you say? Zero the sights.’
While he was relieved at the thought of a quick death, the prospect of being taken out by one of the thumb-sized rounds wasn’t something he was looking forward to. The overall length, including the casing, was just short of six inches, and the bullet itself had a diameter of thirteen millimetres. He’d seen footage of the devastation caused by these weapons; a headshot meant that his would not be an open-casket funeral.
Scarface replied to Vasily, then turned to Harvey.
‘First we eat, then target practice.’
‘Anything from CCTV?’ Ellis asked as she appeared next to Eddie Howes.
‘We managed to get the licence plates from a street camera. We’ve tracked them west, but they entered an area that has no coverage. We’re going through every possible road out of the area, but no luck so far.’
‘Did you send out the alert to all forces?’
‘Two hours ago. No sightings yet.’
‘Keep on it,’ Ellis said, and moved on to Elaine Solomon’s desk. On the monitor Ellis saw a couple of names under a progress bar that showed the search was only twenty-four per cent complete.
‘Who are these two guys?’ she asked.
‘They work for one of Bessonov’s companies,’ Solomon said, ‘but they aren’t the people we’re looking for. One of them works in a butcher’s, the other for a car wash. Both have just returned from holidays in Russia, and neither fits the profile.’
Watching the screen wasn’t going to make the search run any faster, so Ellis headed for her office. She had only gone a few steps when Sarah Thompson burst into the room, making a beeline for her.
‘When were you going to tell me about Andrew?’ she fumed.
All heads quickly turned her way, and Ellis took Thompson by the arm, leading her into her glass office and closing the door.
‘I tried calling you a couple of times,’ Ellis said, ‘and since then I’ve been preoccupied with trying to find him and making sure we get him back safe.’
Thompson stood with her hands on her hips, then her stance melted. ‘I was in meetings all day,’ she eventually said. ‘I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t come home this morning, but it wasn’t good to hear about it in the canteen over at Six. What progress have you made so far?’
‘Nothing yet,’ Ellis admitted, ‘but we’re working up many angles. We know the people who took him are driving black SUVs, and we’re trying to trace them through CCTV. I have others working to identify the suspects through travel records, and a forensics team is at the factory gathering evidence. There’s not a lot more we can do at the moment.’
Thompson was about to question Ellis’s statement when there was a knock on the door.
‘We picked them up leaving the M25 at junction sixteen,’ Solomon said. ‘Eddie tracked them along the M40 to junction eight, where they took the exit towards Oxford. We’ve alerted the local police force and they have three armed response units on standby.’
Ellis was first out of the office, and Thompson followed her to Howes’s desk. On the screen they could see stills of the two vehicles taking an exit at a roundabout. The next shot saw them turn left onto a minor road.
>
‘Where are they heading?’
Howes brought up a map of the area and pinned it to the top-right corner of the screen. ‘There’s not much around there. A couple of villages, a few farms.’
‘Sounds like the ideal place to hide someone,’ Ellis said. ‘Where did they go next?’
Howes clicked the map and brought up the next camera, which showed the main road in a small village. He synchronised the times, then flicked forward until the vehicles once again came into view. After marking their last known location, he searched for the next area to have CCTV coverage, but it wasn’t good news.
‘That’s all we have in the area,’ he said, and then expanded the map to show where coverage would be picked up again. ‘All I can do from here is check each of these twelve cameras to see whether our guys drive past. If they do, we’re back on their tail. If not—’ He drew an imaginary circle around a vast expanse of land. ‘They’re in here somewhere.’
‘Get checking,’ Ellis said. ‘Elaine, contact the local police and give them the coordinates of the area. I want a containment around it as soon as possible. No-one leaves the area.’
‘You think they’re still in there?’ Thompson asked.
‘If they were heading somewhere else, they wouldn’t have used these back roads.’
Thompson nodded. ‘Then I’m going in.’
Andrew Harvey watched his captors dining on home-made soup and had to admit that it smelled delicious. He was tempted to ask for some, if only to delay the inevitable, but had the feeling they weren’t in a sharing mood.
Scarface dunked a piece of bread into his bowl and stuffed it into his mouth. ‘You not scared? You think your friends will save you in “nick of time”?’ he asked Harvey, making air quotes.
It was indeed something Harvey had been thinking about for the last thirty minutes.
‘If I was back at the office, I’d have you surrounded by now. There are over eight thousand CCTV cameras covering Britain’s roads, taking over twenty-five million pictures a day, so our journey here will have been recorded. They’ll have helicopters up soon, and the entire area will be cordoned off. It’s over.’
Scarface looked thoughtful. ‘You think they track our vehicles?’
Harvey nodded. ‘Don’t be surprised if you get a knock on the door any minute now.’
A smile appeared on the scarred face. ‘Then it was good idea to send cars to Scotland, no? Your people will be looking in wrong place, Andrew Harvey. When they find out drivers live here, we are already gone. Vanish.’
For the first time, Harvey thought about the owners of the farm. They’d driven the Russians’ cars north? Why would English farmers be in league with Russian criminals? His puzzlement must have shown.
Scarface laughed. ‘You think I am so stupid? You think this is my first mission in the field? No, we go soon, after Vasily practises on you.’
The conversation was interrupted by a phone, and Vasily answered it. He listened for a moment, then gave the handset to Scarface. The conversation that followed was brief, and Scarface tossed the phone on the table.
‘Change of plan,’ Scarface said to Harvey, then spoke to the others in the room in Russian. Three of them disappeared and returned five minutes later with their bags, accompanied by three others who looked like they’d just woken up.
Harvey assumed they’d be moving out immediately, but after gathering their belongings, the men simply sat around. Vasily dismantled his rifle and put it back in its case, while the newcomers helped themselves to the remainder of the soup.
It gave Harvey a modicum of hope. The longer they waited, the better the chances of Ellis containing the area and sending in a rescue team. The silence dragged on for minutes, until a shout came from one of the men near the kitchen window.
Scarface jumped up to take a look, then went to the door and opened it. Through the gap, Harvey could see two vehicles approaching – an estate car and a minibus. When they parked, two men climbed out of each vehicle and walked towards the building.
Scarface had an automatic in his right hand, hidden behind his back. He challenged the four men, but when they responded he waved them inside. Three of the visitors were young, no more than teenagers, while the other looked to be in his fifties and wore a suit under his heavy overcoat. He was carrying a leather bag that looked to be of the kind doctors used when they travelled.
‘I’m going to prepare you for your journey,’ the older man told Harvey, setting his bag on the table. Unlike the others, this man was English. He reached inside the bag and produced a hypodermic needle, which he filled with a clear liquid from a small bottle. He barked some instructions, and Harvey watched four men head out to the car and open the trunk. They pulled out a large, rectangular box, about seven feet in length. One climbed into the back of the car and retrieved a green case. The items were brought inside and laid out on the floor.
‘What journey?’ Harvey asked, his voice cracking ever so slightly. ‘Where are we going?’
A bead of sweat appeared on his brow and lazily meandered down between his eyes, which were focused on the needle in front of him.
One of the men opened the box, and Harvey could see it was empty. As he looked at the box, the man with the needle slipped around behind him. He felt a sharp prick in his neck, followed by pain as a bolus entered his bloodstream. A bolus of what, exactly? he wondered. He turned to the English doctor to ask, but his tongue refused to obey his mental commands. His vision started to blur and he shook his head in an effort to counteract the drug, to little effect.
The last thing he saw was the doctor opening the green case and removing a tank of oxygen with a facemask attached, before his eyes finally gave up the fight.
Chapter 10
20 January 2016
The needle on Sarah Thompson’s speedometer crept past ninety as she barrelled along the M40, her windscreen wipers working furiously to counter the spray thrown up from the vehicles in front of her.
She eased over to the inside lane as she saw the first markers for junction eight, then pulled off at the exit and killed her speed. At the roundabout she took the same route the SUVs had, her eyes peeled for roadblocks.
She found none.
Thompson’s phone was synched by Bluetooth to the car’s computer. She hit the Call button on the steering wheel and told the on-board system to dial Ellis’s number.
‘Where the hell are the local police?’ she asked when the call connected. ‘I’m seeing cars everywhere driving out of the area!’
‘They’re moving as many people into position as they can,’ Ellis replied. ‘They’re also dealing with a pile-up at junction twelve, and that’s drained their resources.’
‘Then ask the Met for some men,’ Thompson said. ‘We’re going to lose him!’
‘They’ve already got four teams on the way,’ Ellis assured her. ‘ETA six minutes.’
‘What about the chopper?’
‘No point sending it up until containment is in place,’ Ellis said. ‘We’ve got nationwide surveillance systems looking for them, so even if they manage to leave Oxfordshire, they won’t get far.’
Thompson hit the button to end the call. Her satnav was programmed with the location of the farm nearest to the motorway, and she followed the directions. Trees were a blur as she sped down the narrow country road, and she reduced her speed to fifty as she approached a little village. She was through it in seconds and, back on the empty roads, she pushed the needle past seventy.
‘Turn left,’ the electronic voice told her, and Thompson slammed on the brakes as the turning appeared in front of her. She spun the wheel and took to the dirt road, which rose ahead of her and disappeared over a rise.
She brought the car to a stop and climbed out. If Harvey were being held here by an unknown number of armed men, blazing into view would do neither of them any good. She locked the vehicle and drew her Glock. Satisfied that it had a round in the chamber, she placed it into her shoulder holster, then hugged the
bushes as she crept up the hill.
At the top, she could see a long building made from corrugated iron, and to the right of it a detached house. A man came into view, wearing a heavy jacket and waterproof leggings, and she watched him wheel a barrow towards a huge pile of manure and empty the contents at the base. She saw him go back the way he’d come, and waited to see if anyone else showed their face.
Minutes passed, and the only person she observed was the one assigned the job of mucking out the horses as he made another journey to the dung pile.
It looked like business as usual, but Thompson wanted to be sure. She opened her phone and found the settings for the ringtone, then put it back in her pocket and crept back to the car. She drove over the rise and into the courtyard, just as a woman appeared from the house, wearing wellington boots, jodhpurs and a windcheater.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
Thompson removed her wallet from her pocket and flipped it open.
‘Sarah Thomas, DEFRA,’ Thompson said, showing an identity card bearing the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs logo. It was a legend she’d created before leaving Thames House, one that would allow her to inspect any farm without rousing suspicion.
‘I’m Jennie,’ the lady said, looking concerned. ‘We had an inspection two weeks ago. Was something wrong?’
‘Not that I’m aware of,’ Thompson told her. ‘This is an unrelated matter. Do you mind if I have a look around?’
‘Sure, but I’d appreciate it if you could tell me what this is about.’
‘We have a case of foot-and-mouth disease less than thirty miles from here,’ Thompson said. ‘At the moment, we believe it’s an isolated incident, but just in case it spreads, we’re checking all nearby farms to make sure you have procedures in place to combat it.’
The woman’s face was a mask of horror. ‘Please tell me you’re joking!’
‘I wish I was,’ Thompson said, ‘but so far we have four infected cows and we’re conducting further tests on the other livestock on the farm.’
A shell-shocked Jennie agreed to show Thompson around the farm, and explained her concerns. ‘Back in 2007, my husband and I had a farm near Pirbright. We lost three hundred head of cattle due to that testing facility’s damn negligence.’
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