The Lynx Assassin (The Society Book 2)

by Karen Guyler

  His gaze met hers, he grasped her coat collar, pulled her higher off the ground.

  “How’re you doing?” An overly cheerful voice reached through the disaster movie soundtrack.

  “Carl Rubin,” she heard him gasp. “Get me to hospital.”

  “Don’t you worry, we’ll take good care of you.” The paramedic responded.

  Finch dropped her back onto the concrete and walked off. The paramedic being there had probably saved her life. Eva closed her eyes.

  “Eva, are you hurt?”

  The man squatting in front of her made her think she’d taken a harder knock to the head than she’d thought. Was she dreaming? Light brown skin, shaved head. As if he wasn’t recognisable from that, she couldn’t mistake his grey eyes for anyone else’s. They were really arresting. She felt a bubble of hysteria, just as she had the first time she’d thought that when he’d interviewed her thinking she was a suspect in her former colleague’s murder last year.

  “DI Smith?” She pushed herself up onto one hand, held the back of her neck. “What’re you doing here?”

  He smiled, he should do that more often. “I am police, police have been called. Luke Fox asked me to come down, see if I could help you. Are you injured?”

  “I’ve got to find my daughter. She’s here, somewhere.” Her voice caught. “The man responsible for all this is there.” She jabbed at Rubin. “He needs to be arrested and his bodyguard, Sean Finch, he was here, but he’s gone, probably to retrieve the rifles. He’ll be visiting Rubin later; you could set up a sting.”

  “One thing at a time.”

  Eva opened her mouth, closed it again. Should she tell DI Smith about the rifles? Someone needed to know.

  “I need to call this in.” She got to her feet, staggered a little.

  DI Smith held onto her. “You need to be checked out. You might be concussed.”

  Eva dug around in her coat pockets. “I’m not shot. The paramedics have enough to deal with.” They were empty. “He took my phone. Can I use yours? I need to let Luke know.”

  “Of course.” He unlocked it and handed it to her with Luke’s number displayed. She hit call and walked slowly away from the detective, each step a little less wobbly.

  “Elliot, you got her?” Luke answered.

  “It’s me. I’m fine, thanks for looking out for me. I got Rubin. His weapon shot him in the leg, don’t know if he’ll make it.”

  “Remind me to not get on your bad side.”

  “Sean Finch has control of the rifles. The first is in York House, Empire Way, Rubin said we’d see the second down that one’s scope. They filmed the whole thing to show this mystery client how the weapon works. He had two on this, two drones for the firing side, probably more for the filming. Don’t know if Iago can backtrack them. Can you set up a sting to grab Finch when he goes to visit his boss in hospital? He took the fob off me that controls the firing.”

  “You’re making the rest of us look bad.” Luke said. “I’ll get on it. You staying on the ground?”

  “I have to look for Lily, she was in the Arena.”

  Luke’s sudden silence said it all.

  Fighting the maternal panic clawing at her, Eva remembered to tell Luke to track her phone. “Finch took it.”

  “Have Elliott stay with you, so I can reach you when I get there. I’m sure she’s safe, Eva, she’s your daughter.”

  That wasn’t nearly enough reassurance.

  44

  Inside the Arena it was eerily quiet despite all the people sheltering in the tiered seating.

  “Lily, Lily Janssen!”

  But no head of long brown hair popped up at Eva’s yell.

  “Anya Fernandez!” No cautious peering around anything at that shout either. “Has anyone seen two young girls, one with brown hair, one with black?”

  Eva didn’t know what Lily had been wearing.

  The couple of negative replies shouted in her and DI Smith’s direction were enough to send Eva out of the arena, charging for the toilets.

  “I’ll take the mens, you do the ladies.” he said.

  No one answered in either of the sets Eva tried. If only Finch hadn’t taken her phone, one call to Tricia could have put her mind at rest because Lily was fine. She had to be okay. Eva should have memorised Tricia’s number.

  “Her best friend’s mum is in a café, I told her to tell them to come back in here if they called.” Eva ran her hands through her hair. The panic was winning. Should she go searching through the bodies outside? She gulped in air.

  “It’s okay, we’ll find them.” DI Smith said. “You know which café?” Eva shook her head. “You know her number?”

  “Not off by heart.” She was failing at being a mother.

  “What would Lily do? Where would she go?” DI Smith led her outside.

  “To Tricia, her friend’s mum.”

  “So we need to find her then. What does her mum look like?”

  Eva looked up at him. “Beautiful, she’s Brazilian, olive skin, long dark curly hair, dark eyes, slim, tall. Anya’s a lot like her, Lily has golden brown eyes, long brown hair, she’s almost as tall as me.”

  A crushing tiredness hit Eva and, out of all proportion to what she was feeling, she yawned.

  “You need to be checked out. I think you’re concussed.”

  “I’ll be fine, I have to find Lily.”

  “Okay, let’s start there.” He pointed at an adjoining road where there were several cafés, restaurants and bars.

  “If you saw anything that can help us with what happened here today, please make yourself known to a police officer. If you need medical attention, please come to the ambulance bay outside the main entrance. Otherwise, please leave the area.” Someone repeated the instructions over and over through the loud speaker Eva had needed earlier.

  The shooting must have stopped, Finch more concerned about securing the weapon now. Getting it before the authorities did. Eva trotted beside DI Smith’s fast strides. He looked the question at her.

  She shook her head. “I’m fine, keep going.”

  The first café was packed. Eva ran inside, DI Smith taking the neighbouring restaurant. She pushed past the queue to scour the tables. No one she recognised.

  She almost bumped into him as she burst out of the café. She was sure they could discount the bars but the Italian restaurant halfway along the street might be a possibility. “I’ll take that one,” Eva told him, rushing inside, nearly ploughing into the last person in the queue waiting for a table.

  “They’re full, not taking anyone else after us.” he told her.

  “I don’t want to eat. I’m just looking for my daughter.” Eva nudged past them and did a quick recce of the tables and everyone sitting at them. People laughing, chatting, having a good time while just over the road outside, others were having the worst or last day of their lives. She raced down the stairs, grabbing at the bannister when she felt another wave of dizziness, hanging on until it passed.

  Back outside, DI Smith beckoned her from the other side of the road. “Eva, in here. They’re all safe.”

  Eva’s legs almost went out from underneath her. She rushed inside. “Lily.”

  “Mum?” Lily threw herself at Eva.

  “You’re okay.” Eva repeated again and again, fighting back tears of relief.

  “I told them what you said,” Tricia said, “but they were already on their way outside so I told them to run over here.”

  “We have bomb scare drills at school, we know to get away quickly.” Lily’s explanation was muffled against Eva. Hopefully she hadn’t seen any of the murders. Eva held her tighter.

  It took a few minutes before Eva got herself enough under control to thank DI Smith.

  “When I’m not questioning you, you can call me Elliott.” He smiled.

  She managed one back, remembering how tough he’d been when he had questioned her last year.

  “Elliott, thank you.”

  His smile deepened. “My
pleasure.”

  45

  The office door to which Eva was escorted at Vauxhall Cross wasn’t one she’d ever been through when she’d worked there. It was just a door on the outside, but the secrets discussed on the other side of it could bring down regimes, topple governments, change the course of world events. Probably had. It was a heady power wielded in there.

  Just hours ago, she wouldn’t have turned up to the summons. But the people she’d saved at the SSE Arena by being there—and those she hadn’t—tipped the balance for her into wanting to stay with the Security Services. Being behind a desk was just as valid as being in the field, she could make a difference from there too. But going home to Lily at night, that was everything.

  She’d thought MI6 could have appointed her as an analyst through Gordon. Perhaps she had to sign the Official Secrets Act again or they were putting her back in Vauxhall Cross.

  Eva’s escort knocked at the door and at the ‘enter’, opened it to let her into the lion’s den.

  She’d never met the Director of MI6, never seen him on the news, nor even walking around the corridors of the building. He kept a low profile, a lot quieter than Anna Bailey, his opposite number at MI5. Rumours about him circulated in the media when they thought about it, which wasn’t often. What happened on home soil was better clickbait for their consumers, a fact that served MI6 well.

  “Good morning. Eva Janssen, you asked to see me.”

  Sir Hugo Welch looked up from the monitor on his desk. If she’d passed him in the street, she’d never have guessed at what he did. He had an unassuming air, his neatly trimmed ribbon of grey hair, rimless glasses, keen blue eyes and ruddy cheeks suggested he was an accountant, a solicitor, someone who’d never raise their voice. The perfect disguise for the agent she imagined he’d once been.

  “You’ve caused some waves.”

  She frowned. “Why?”

  “Do you need me to spell it out?”

  His desk phone rang. “Yes?” He sighed. “I’ll take it.” He moved his mouse around and clicked a few times, gestured at the chair by the wall. “You’d better sit, he won’t be able to see you there.”

  A screen on the opposite wall sprang to life, and Edward Markham’s face filled it.

  “Good morning, Prime Minister.” Welch said. “I’m here with Eva Janssen.” He clicked and the PM’s face moved to the top of the screen. He, with Eva tiny behind him, appeared in a box at the bottom.

  “You?” The PM’s greeting wasn’t friendly. “You’re the cause of all this trouble?”

  Eva didn’t know what to say to that, so she hedged. “Congratulations on your appointment, Prime Minister.”

  He inclined his head slightly. “I’m obviously extremely unhappy that this event happened on my watch.”

  She ignored that he made it sound like she was responsible.

  “How can I possibly sign the green directive with Futura Energy now that their CEO is lying in a coma in a London hospital, shot on British soil?” The PM sounded petulant.

  “By his own weapon.” Eva interrupted the Director’s reply. “Which Carl Rubin used to kill his business partner and deputy. The government might be grateful to not be associated with him. I’m sure that Futura Energy won’t want to lose the deal, they’ll find someone to represent them.”

  “This weapon that can apparently fire bullets on its own just into the air and they find their way to shoot the intended targets no matter where they are? It all sounds too far-fetched to me.”

  “This is apparently weapons dealing in the twenty-first century.”

  “You’re besmirching the reputation of a man unable to defend himself, a man who does stellar work on behalf of us all. Welch, I’ll be instructing my staff to focus on MI6 in our audit of the security services.”

  “Prime Minister,” Eva refused to say with all due respect, she didn’t want to weaken her argument before it was even uttered. “I wasn’t there yesterday as a representative of MI6. I did what I could to save lives, as I would hope any of us would do in that situation.”

  “Precisely why I haven’t ordered your arrest.”

  For what? Eva held her tongue.

  “You’d better hope Carl Rubin doesn’t die, because murder is something else again.”

  “It was his weapon that shot him.” Eva said evenly, “his press on the remote to make it fire.”

  The Director silenced her with a look.

  “Prime Minister, if I may. We are, of course, co-operating with your officers to give you oversight of our activities. The Official Secrets Act forbids Ms Janssen from discussing the events that happened as part of her mission and any of the ensuing consequences yesterday. As you know, she was on a trial mission, that trial didn’t work out. She’s no longer part of SIS.”

  46

  Didn’t they say you never knew what you had until it was gone?

  Eva walked back to St George’s Grove for the last time.

  ‘You’ve always chosen to stay small’, her ex-husband’s taunt when she’d tried to stop him poisoning a city for his personal revenge. Taking the position Gordon had offered her had been a way to answer that and carry on her father’s legacy. And now it had been torn away from her.

  These goodbyes were going to be painful.

  Her access pass still worked, letting her in through the sturdy outer door, the inner airlock. The closed door policy of beyond top secret meant the corridors and stairs were always quiet, so she reached her office without meeting anyone. She needed to tell Gordon, Nora, Luke in case the Director’s memo hadn’t reached them yet.

  She booted up her laptop to perform a system wipe, even though she knew Iago would do the equivalent of a steam sterilisation to delete any data traces from her tiny footprint there as though they’d never existed.

  Her notes folder—a throwback to when she’d been an analyst, anything and everything that struck her as odd, out of place, bizarre, against perceived wisdom—only had one entry in it. It made her feel worse, the image of the quote in Arabic that Rubin had on his office wall on his yacht. Another reminder she was failing her father. She deleted it.

  Nora swiped herself into Eva’s office. “You’re going to be late. Come on.”

  “Late?”

  “You didn’t see Iago’s debrief message? If we can, we like to tie up the mission as a team. This one, it’s easy. Come on.”

  Easy? Nothing about this had been easy.

  Gordon, Luke and Iago were already in the debriefing room when Eva followed Nora in. She could tell them then altogether, at least she only had to say it once.

  “How’s your shoulder?” Eva asked Luke.

  “Can’t wait to get rid of this.” He gestured at his sling with his good hand.

  “Sorry I’m late.” Sadie bounced into the room. “It’s hard to pull myself away from all the goodies you guys got me. It’s like he was getting tech to bend to what he wanted, instead of inventing something and then figuring out how to use it. Iago, there’s definitely stuff you’ll want to look at, reverse engineer. Happy days.”

  “The debrief, Eva,” Gordon explained, “is how we look at what happened to see if we can do better. Your brief as The Society is very different to how MI6 operates, as a whole. It also forms the basis of what we report back to the Ethics Committee.”

  “It’s also a way to remember the good.” Luke said. “For us that’s the most important part. So, do you want to list the good on this mission?”

  Five gazes turned her way, fingers on tablets, pen against blank paper.

  “Start at the beginning, that’s usually easier.” He prompted.

  “I was tasked to get Carl Rubin to agree to pretend to have been assassinated, but I failed. I tried to talk to his wife, who contacted The Society, to understand why she ordered the hit, but I failed at that too. I got her arrested under a DUI charge. We discovered Rubin is an arms dealer.”

  “From that list of failures, you’ve given us a new protocol,” Nora interjected. “If we
can understand why a hit’s ordered, it may shine a better light on how to deal with the case.”

  “What next?” Luke asked. “Looking for the good right now.”

  Eva hesitated. Nothing about Fisher and Jacob being killed was good. Probably shouldn’t class the killing of other gun runners as good either.

  “Can I just say, getting our hands on what you brought back is no way a failure, I’ll be using that tech in all sorts of ways. He’s overcome all the reasons it shouldn’t work.” Sadie said.

  The Lynx Assassin. The other gunrunners.

  “It’s not that.” Eva said. “It’s not that. It’s him, he’s the Lynx Assassin, I heard him talking to his bodyguard. He said time to change camouflage, a lynx can do that.” She looked at Gordon. “The men killed at his cabin, do you have their identities yet?”

  Iago swiped at his tablet, and photos of the two hostiles popped up onto the screens. The man she’d shot and branded looked so much younger than she’d realised.

  “From your photos, Eva, we’ve identified them as members of a Pakistani military group.”

  “What’s the number one rule amongst arms dealers?” She didn’t wait for any guesses. “They said it at Rubin’s cabin, they don’t use the merchandise on each other. Otherwise there’s no trust to do business.” A couple of nods around the table, following her logic. “And what happened at the cabin? These two were killed.”

  She drew breath, finished in a rush. “Rubin had the place booby trapped everywhere. What if he believed the Pakistanis set one of his traps off, that he killed them? He’d have to make amends, wouldn’t he, otherwise how could anyone trust him to do business with again? Who are the other members of the group?”

  Iago tapped and swiped some more. A man’s face nudged the two dead men out of the way. “This is the leader, Tarik Shah.”